We have warmed the earth because we love comfort and money. We will never stop loving those things. So instead let's use the same systems to fix this (or at least slow things down).
As an individual my largest carbon impact is air travel. I like to go places, it's one of the main things I work to afford. Every single plane ticket I take should have a tax which is used to offset or capture the carbon emissions of my flight. I will pay it. Anyone not willing to pay it will have to fly less. Any airlines that can't operate under the tax will not operate.
Now do the same thing for corporate polluters, packaging waste, etc. If a country won't do this for domestic goods we can at least impose climate tariffs at borders.
The only other thing that could work is some fantastic new technological solution, but let's not wait for that.
Taxation of carbon totally works. British Columbia has a $50/tonne tax, which increases the cost of unleaded gas by about CAD $0.996/L and natural gas by $0.0882/m^3 [1]
Revenue from the tax goes into the government's general revenue, which allows BC to have among the lowest rate of income tax of any province in Canada. Meanwhile, BC has the highest rate of electrical vehicle purchasing in North America [2]. One study showed that employment increased by 0.74% as a result of the carbon tax [3]. Finally, research shows that the tax is highly progressive, having a smaller impact on poor households than rich ones [4].
The lower income tax actually offsets the premium I pay to live here vs other provinces. Or at least that's how it worked out when I had a job last March. The rent keeps coming, but the money ain't.
There's a threshold of savings under which things start getting very risky, that encroaches on my happyness, but on the flipside there's no amount of money I can think of that would make me work endlessly, because it doesn't make me happy beyond that
I've been saying this for years, but I finally get why "Just. Tax. It." doesn't work. The voters. They turn out in droves when it comes to taxes on something as visible as the price they pay at the pump or when it comes to the oil patch in Alberta.
It's politically easier to create import duties or to go into debt and subsidize things. The level of taxation we need to stop a complete catastrophe is higher than people will put up with in most of the world.
That's a fundamental problem with any regulatory measure intended to reduce carbon emissions. Cheap energy is good for the economy. Fossil fuels are cheap. Any attempt to reduce the use of fossil fuels is going to hurt voters in the short term no matter how you package it.
Sure, you can try to be sneaky about it, implementing policies that only indirectly impact fossil fuels and hoping the voters don't notice you're the one to blame for the rising price of energy. Or you can be honest, bite the bullet, and try to convince the public a carbon tax is necessary to avoid something even worse down the line. Either way you're fighting an uphill battle.
You really should not be sneaky about it - some of the populist-or-worse parties here in Europe are already full into "eco-fashist EU is taking away your cars!" together with their usual drivel.
True, Switzerland (who I view as a "green" and progressive country) recently voted against those taxes in a referendum. I think it would be much worse in other countries.
Switzerland, like California, is a direct democracy. Taxes that touch the assets of voting demographics fail while taxes that burden non-voting demographics pass.
Nit: Switzerland as a country is a semi-direct democracy not a direct democracy. Only 2 cantons fulfil the criteria for the classical definition of direct democracy.
Indeed, Switzerland is very conservative. Like in every other country you have a divide between the progressive/liberal/young-ish big cities (Zurich, Bern, Lausanne, Basel, ...) and the conservative/old-ish rest of the country (great skylines, very low population density).
--> Swiss cantons are split up historically, not by population, similar to US states. The conservative, low-pop cantons can hold the progressives hostage on anything they don't like because even if you get the liberal cities behind you that is still way beyond the majority of cantons.
Comment you're responding to probably didn't mean American conservative. Most conservatives support abortion in the EU, it's the far-right that doesn't.
Even when people propose this type of dividend it still doesn't usually work because the people that live in the cities already vote for the measures to curb climate change while the people that live in the sticks aren't going to see enough of a dividend to make up for the extra cost at the pump. Even allocating it by region (i.e., the taxes of a region go to paying for the dividend of the region, and there are larger dividends per person in a region with higher GHG taxes) don't work because too many people are retired or essentially non-commuting, and there are a host of issues around balancing out incentives. For example, a person may move across the street just to get a higher dividend.
To be fair, if people living in cities tend to have much lower GHG emissions than people living in rural areas, we probably want to have an extra incentive for people to live in cities, right? And even with that, there is a pretty wide variation of emissions levels between consumers in each of these types of regions.
You can have a very small town of 100 people that is designed so people can get around without a car. Small towns in Ireland, for example, look very different from small towns in the US -- but we used to build like that, and we can again. If you live out in the sticks, you probably make a lot of unnecessary trips because fuel is cheap, where there is potential to wait and do lots of shopping at once. You can probably insulate your house better, buy an electric water heater, stick solar panels on your house, etc.
Farms depend on a lot of machinery that uses fossil fuels right now, which is difficult to change, but could gradually be converted to more efficient energy sources. And actually, the Energy Innovation Act, which is Citizens' Climate Lobby's preferred carbon tax, has an exemption for agriculture -- it's a very small part of emissions, and it's worth it to get more people on board with the bill and get it passed sooner rather than later.
And we shouldn't compare an imperfect but still good tax to some unachievable ideal, we should compare it to other real-world solutions, and in that comparison, I think a carbon tax with dividend is probably the fairest and most cost-effective way to quickly cut carbon emissions.
I agree with you for cars, which is why I think the appropriate approach is to:
1. tax flying, or rather shame airlines who do not compensate aggressively until they all do, and monitor compensation schemes because at the moment, too many are non-sensical blackmail-like counter-factual arguments around cutting forests;
2. ban industrial releases of CO2: all has to be captured and stored; storage is cheap now, so industrials will rather do that than lobby (until storage price go up, but at that points, things will have gotten much uglier);
3. ban new ICE cars, or make those excessively expensive to build: second-hand cars price will explode subsidising current car owners, and opening a wider gap for electric cars. Guarantee loans on electric cars to make them unaffordable cheaper, until the resell value takes over. No need to make gas more expensive: electric cars are cheaper to maintain today. You just have to make it more obvious to buyers.
Start by taxing the big polluters, not individuals. Less than 1/3rd of pollution comes from individuals (and mostly from ICE cars, so incentivize EVs to tackle that), the rest comes from industry so go after the big piece of the pie first.
The industry will R&D ways to cut pollution since they'll be financially incentivized to do that, the resulting technology will be later adapted for other applications.
Did we just tax tobacco? People loved tobacco. At some point, with the right information (e.g media not bought by big business), we can realize that things that are bad for us are just bad for us.
We can avoid telling us that and have someone take money from our wallet to prevent us from buying the things that kill us, but why not just better inform ourselves about the way we're killing us?
Anywhere I go now, I'm overwhelmed by ads telling me to buy a big SUV, go flight somewhere every weekend, buy something new because I deserve more, etc.
Of course, those paying for the ads say they're advertising because I want those things... but why are they advertising, then? If I wanted a bigger SUV/picker so much, they would not keep the ad spend and keep that as profit for their shareholders.
The whole system wants more, more, more stuff and they know the more addictive are the bigger/larger/shinier/louder/anything-er and that takes energy and pollutes. They need that more than the consumers.
I stopped loving this shit (no car, no flight, small flat, etc), and I'm still flooded with "BUY" orders. Employers will do everything to have me buy a car (I don't need) instead of taking the money of that car for myself.
It isn't a problem of wish or desire but we're told it is, because the consumption system keeps playing with these desires. I should just watch Century of the Self again...
I'm not sure tobacco is a good comparison here. Tobacco was a relatively easy thing to tax/restrict/ban as it serves no real purpose beyond individual enjoyment.
And about the time governments started taxing the shit out of tobacco is also about the time tobacco use was starting to become quite unfashionable. Why would I or my friends care about not being able to smoke in a bar if we find smoky bars annoying? Hypothetically try passing such taxes in the 60s, see how far that would have gotten.
Point being: carbon tax? That hits everyone to some extent, and arguably hits those least likely to care about climate change the most.
Denying climate change is also becoming unfashionable, while vegetarianism and electric cars become fashionable. These are good trends that have been slowed down for many years by corporate campaigns such as Global Climate Coalition [1]. The same thing happened with tobacco.
The problem is, just taxing CO2 emissions doesn't let you control who gets hit by the price increases. It could very well lead to increases in food and transportation costs that would be disproportionately burdensome to the poorest part of the population. Raising the cost of those items is politically very unpopular since it tends to cause unrest.
So I think what we'll get instead is some complex system of first taxing everything and then subsidizing some forms of consumption (again, food and transportation), while trying to incentivize switching over to renewable energy sources.
The earnings of the CO2 tax could be equally distributed to all citizens on a monthly basis. That way, while consumer prices would increase, all those citizens who contribute below average to the country's CO2 emissions (and those are the vast majority and especially includes people who are poor) would, in sum, have more money available than before.
There's no guarantee that a "CO2 tax" would be equally distributed itself. For an extreme case, imagine if we put a universal CO2 tax on all products. A producer might chose to slash the price of luxury goods, instead funneling the cost to lower end options. That would cause the prices the poor pay to rise more than the you subsidy would offset.
Distributing the cost equally to the producer doesn't mean they carry over equally to consumer cost.
>So I think what we'll get instead is some complex system of first taxing everything and then subsidizing some forms of consumption (again, food and transportation),
or just tax everything, then giving it back to everyone via a flat dividend?
> Every single plane ticket I take should have a tax which is used to offset or capture the carbon emissions of my flight. I will pay it.
So what you're saying is that it won't change your behavior. Why don't you just donate $1000 or whatever to a charity? (I dunno, maybe you already do). I don't mean to attack you, but encoded in your very language is the exact problem. No one is willing to change their own behavior, they want other people to change. Repeat this x 7 billion and suddenly you understand what the inertia is.
We live in the fading dream of a world that we sold to us that we could do whatever we want with absolutely no consequences; worse, that everything that we did that "made money" and contributed to GDP growth was good for everyone. Turns out that that was bullshit greed talking and the God of consequences is visiting its revenge on us through the same lesson every petri dish full of bacteria learns: you will choke to death on your own waste products.
Pardon me, but your post is just about virtue signalling or you're missing the point entirely.
If you increase the taxes for something, you will drop the demand and, therefore, consumption. It doesn't matter whether OP will change his/her behaviour, it matter that we, as a planet of people taking X flights per year, will reduce our flights by Y% due to tax.
I don't want to change my behaviour because that doesn't fix anything. I want to be forced to changed my behaviour, along with everyone else on the planet, through taxation for which I am happy to vote for and support with all my being.
> I want to be forced to changed my behaviour, along with everyone else on the planet, through taxation for which I am happy to vote for and support with all my being.
I agree with you, and do so with my fiat (EVs, solar, no air travel unless absolutely necessary, vegetarian, etc). There are billions of global citizens who likely don’t agree with you (or us), who will happily consume regardless of the consequences (and either can’t or won’t pay for the per ton emissions).
The challenge is in changing the behavior of disinterested or adversarial parties in the face of political apathy. It’s going to get uncomfortable.
I was by no means implying that people want this, I know categorically that almost nobody wants this.
But it doesn't matter what people want, I have already lost hope because nothing in our system is geared towards helping out with this. The incentives are completely misaligned and nothing will really change for a long, long time.
As far as I see it, you have the following:
- Our entire world economy is based simply on consuming as much as possible. This is exactly the opposite of what needs to happen in order for us to have a chance, the exact polar opposite.
- People are willing to protest even a few cents in tax increases, even in Europe. In the USA, everything required for climate action will be seen as communist by half the country.
- You have so many other countries coming from behind that will simply want the standard of living you see in the West. (China, India, Brazil, Africa etc.).
- Emissions are actually rising, even though we knew about climate change for decades.
- Politicians have their career in 4 year chunks. Nobody wants to rock the boat by increasing taxes on their constituents and get voted out.
- People have somewhat short lives. Most people who are alive now will not worst of the consequences.
You have very large forces pushing towards maintaining the status quo.
What needs to happen in order to fix our planet will just not happen because it cannot happen. We might be able to limit the damage, but that's about it. If science and technology don't solve this by some sort of miracle, it will only get worse.
I actually completely agree with what you wrote, so it's weird that we disagree about the carbon taxes. Sure, carbon taxes are going to reduce the demand for certain types of goods due to basic economics. But taxes also bless certain things as acceptable, as long as you pay your indulgences. It puts the onus on the rubes, the masses, to stop doing that.
People talk about eco-fascism and really heavy-handed things like outright bans on certain activities. Frankly, I think what is coming will be worse. It will be eco-anarchy. Mad max style where billionaires and ex-oil executives will be hunted.
It really isn't the rubes' fault. If you give a monkey a banana, he will eat the banana and throw the peel over his shoulder. If you give a monkey a bag of chips, he will eat the chips and throw the bag over his shoulder. Who's responsible? The monkey or the craven bastard who cooked up plastic chip bags to expand their market to every monkey in the world? Same principle. The bastards who are responsible are those producers who set the menu of choices and slip crack into their products on the sly so the monkeys get addicted. And then they blame monkeys and think monkeys should pay a chip-bag tax while they fuck off to New Zealand. Yeah, they will he hunted.
Well, I actually I agree with a lot of the stuff you write, but definitely disagree on taxes.
The main point I disagree with is that adding taxes somehow makes your choices seem okay. I don't really think that's the way to look at it, though I do understand there is some merit to the idea.
I'm not saying adding a carbon tax should be the only solution or even the best longterm solution. But the issue is that we cannot ban cars or flying or oil or plastics without seriously disrupting the whole world. So that's a nonstarter for me, we just can't do it, even if it would, in fact, be the best solution if you only consider the environment.
So we're down to mitigating damage at this point, since we can't directly fight the root cause. So maybe there are other solutions, but taxation is a pretty obvious way to reduce demand. Is it true that rich people will still be able to pay the tax and just indulge? Sure, we can maybe compensate for that somewhat, but rich people will always be better off. Should we all dig a deeper hole just in order to prevent some rich people having more than the rest of us?
> I'm not saying adding a carbon tax should be the only solution or even the best longterm solution. But the issue is that we cannot ban cars or flying or oil or plastics without seriously disrupting the whole world. So that's a nonstarter for me, we just can't do it, even if it would, in fact, be the best solution if you only consider the environment.
Oh, we can totally ban plastic, or at least all plastics that are not biodegradable. We lack political courage to do so, and it will cost money. I pick up a lot of litter and by far the bulk of it is one-time packaging for snack items. (It's hard not to conclude, as if studying humans as animals, that we're a bunch of fat little monkeys that can't stop eating and must carry food with us everywhere we go.)
I don't think we can ban flying though. What we need is not electric jets, because batteries will not compete with liquid fuel for energy density. We need carbon-neutral production of jet fuel, either through a process like biodiesel or a chemical process that takes electrical energy as input, e.g. from solar or nuclear.
> So we're down to mitigating damage at this point,
Oh, we are so fucked that it's almost pointless. Literally every thread of our economy is not sustainable. Crank the handle of time 1000 years, even with no growth, and every single thing we do goes off the rails. We're depleting all the resources on this Earth and even if we halt the CO2 crisis, there's a hundred thousand minor crises vying to metastasize into something as bad or worse. A thousand years, ten thousand years of modern tech living, and this planet is a tech junkyard with precious little biosphere. Humans will either go back to being monkeys eating bananas or Earth is going to be a desert hellscape pocked with nuclear-powered Arcologies.
>I don't want to change my behaviour because that doesn't fix anything. I want to be forced to changed my behaviour, along with everyone else on the planet...
That first sentence is the problem with this world. Everyone says that they want to fix a problem until it comes time to take action. You're just lying to yourself and virtue signaling to everyone else if you're not making steps in your own life to actively make a change in your own behavior.
That second sentence will be the downfall of all free people. It's weak willed people like you who won't make changes in their own lives literally begging for government to take more power. Asking the government to force you to change your own behavior.
You're very naive to think this power you would give so freely will be used benevolently. You needn't look any further than the government's inaction to punish those big companies who are destroying our oceans, our economies, our rivers. No big company CEOs ever go to prison for destroying our planet because our politicians are bank rolled by them. There is the ruling class, then there is you me, and everyone else. These are the people you will surrender your freedoms to so cheerfully.
Carbon taxes are political suicide in the US. In fact, we know that oil companies push for them exactly because they know how unpopular they are.
In Washington state, one of the more progressive states, they've failed over and over again to pass a carbon tax. Nothing they can do makes it work politically. In France, a carbon tax kicked off the yellow vests movement.
Like it or not, the Green New Deal framing works better, because it emphasizes the benefits, rather than the costs.
It seems a strategy that might work is pairing the carbon tax with a universal refundable tax credit such that it's revenue-neutral. That way people can pocket the difference if they want to use less carbon.
The more time passes, the more people support a carbon tax. A carbon tax and dividend is actually supported by a majority of Americans of both parties, now. But Congress is lagging behind popular support a bit, and needs people to let them know that we do support it.
Exactly. America is structurally dependent on cars. The working poor have been forced into increasingly long commutes to find affordable housing. We need big structural changes: densification, massive investment in sustainable transit systems and urban design.
Do you honestly believe that given enough money politicians can come up with a viable solution for climate change? Mind you those are the same people who want to end privacy on the Internet[1].
Same people who came up with European Union’s biofuel mandate which caused deforestation of Indonesia for palm-oil plantations. Across the pond, it's the same people that subsidized ethanol fuel which, more or less, benefited only corn farmers.
I might be too cynical but what's most likely to happen is that corporations will find a way to avoid paying the tax and it will hurt people who struggle the most already.
For example, in EU car manufacturers have to keep average CO2 emissions of new car sales below 95 g/km. VW buys a large amount (I believe it was around 37%) of their ID.3 electric car to reduce the average emissions of their newly sold cars.
So what you suggest is we take money from poor people and burn it. I fail to see how that will help.
I suggest we take money from anyone who wants to pollute. At source. Yes, some poor people will be impacted (though not as many as continuing to ignore the problem).
By "at source", I mean that car makers should not be taxed.
Instead, fossil fuels should be taxed as close as possible to when they are pulled from the ground. Not when they are used (like a car does).
Then if car makers decide to build big diesel chugging vehicles, of course their market will be severely limited because not many people will want to pay the cost of running them.
Car makers are therefore still incentivized by market forces. to build efficient vehicles, but we don't need artificial and easily gamed regimes about what proportion of their production is fuel efficient.
Presumably, VW buying their own cars to offset their CO2 emissions redistributes some of their profit from more-CO2-emitting cars into their supply chain, thus incentivizing them to sell fewer of those cars.
Economists have been saying this for years. Really it's the only way to let market forces decide.
Make it a publicly listed company that collects the tax, and distribute dividends equally to all citizens. Such things should be possible with digital currencies.
Carbon taxes disproportionately hurt low income people. Rich folks will still drive their cars, fly on jets, and use tons of energy in general. Carbon taxes also make your nation less competitive in a global economy. That’s not good when enemy states have zero compunction about using fossil fuels to overtake you economically and militarily. Carbon taxes also incentivize industry to move production to nations with little or no carbon tax. In general I find it extremely foolish to think that carbon taxes would be a good way of going about this.
> Carbon taxes disproportionately hurt low income people.
If the carbon tax collected was re-distributed uniformly as a tax credit (each person gets the same tax credit), would it still hurt low income people?
I Googled this and it seems like it should help people with low incomes, but maybe there's something wrong with the underlying reasoning.
No, but every proposal so far hand waves the specifics of both what the tax will go to along with all the other technical details that would actually make the tax work. We could have a utopian world where the true value of carbon is consistently taxed equally across all industries and then distributed efficiently to those unfairly affected by it. We could also have an unholy bureaucrtic nightmare where the actual tax varies violently depending on which party in power, has exemptions for every industry big enough to have lobbyist, and instead completely burdens the middle class while all profits go towards filling the desert with enough tanks to fight WWII sixteen times over while still having enough left over to think really, really hard about building high speed rail in a place that isn't useless.
Don't forget that the people that would be implementing this are the same people who are currently voting to criminalize every element of the cryptocurrency ecosystem (including development of more efficient standards) while still leaving an exception for PoW miners.
All the money has to go to the dividend, minus the admin costs which should be very small. The bill does include exemptions for the military and agriculture, so it's not perfect, but it is necessary to make some concessions to make it politically viable. I'd rather have this bill now than one without those exemptions in 15 years or whatever.
A carbon tax with dividends would solve that problem. It would be a net positive for the first 6 or 7 decile of the population while still sending a strong signal to the markets to switch to greener alternatives to stay competitive.
Regarding moving production abroad, the carbon tax should work hand in hand with a border adjustment mechanism.
Climate change disproportionately hurts low income people even more.
Those who rely on crop yields and fish stocks to survive every year and don't have the money to become refugees will have a much harder time than the first world folks who might need to start carpooling.
Yeah well that’s because poor people (in America) are hella carbon inefficient for economic value creation. They’ll drive like 100 miles each way to work a $16/hr job as a McDonalds worker.
Taxing it is still pretty hard to do. It's often hard to know exact emissions or what to test. I agree its probably an easier solution, but the accounting of "who is actually producing the carbon" is incredibly complicated, and will become more incredibly complicated as soon as literally billions of dollars are at stake.
Thousands of other things also have carbon emissions: beef production for instance. Or deforestation -- while it doesn't have a positive CO2 benefit, it removes a CO2 sink. The fishing industry has massive CO2 costs that aren't from fossil fuels.
That's 1 thing (the meat industry) whose carbon emissions are both direct (not supply-chain based) and wouldn't be captured by a petroleum+coal producers tax. Not thousands.
Meat production is about 15% of our global carbon emissions, so certainly it can't be ignored - but when the other 85% is coming from activity fueled by petroleum+coal, it doesn't make a lot of sense to throw up your hands to reject a carbon tax because there's "thousands" of emissions source (which ones?) which collectively amount to less than a percentage point of our carbon footprint.
We mustn't let the best be the enemy of the very, very good. A straight-forward carbon tax on fossil fuels is both enforceable, linear, and not that complicated. Can we ignore ranching and meat production? Of course not. So let's tax both.
National carbon taxes for the US are politically infeasible. Best we can do right now is big climate-tied infrastructure spending packages, sector-specific targets, R&D investments--whole mess of things. That is the stuff that can pass for the foreseeable future. Carbon taxes as the exclusive solution is a naive dream of economists.
Carbon taxes are pushed by the fossil fuel industry precisely because they are politically untenable. They push for the solution they know isn't going to happen.
China is the largest CO2 producer in the world and is growing. The US is second but our emissions are actually decreasing and likely to continue decreasing. Taxing Western companies may reduce the West's carbon footprint but hardly helps the overall picture while being essentially austerity.
Oh it very much helps. Non western country also have a right to develop economically. It's not that by being first to pollute the atmosphere. By reducing the incredible irresponsible per capita emissions of the USA other countries can develop within a fixed CO2 budget.
How do you define what an appropriate per capita CO2 budget is? Is it different for someone from China, India, and the US? What about the difference between individuals from rural agricultural communities vs a large city? If non-western countries have the 'right' to increase carbon emissions why don't poorer people in Western countries have the 'right' to increase their emissions?
What is the target level for developing economics? How does it make sense to mandate Western countries go to net-zero while all developing countries continue to dramatically increase per capita emissions?
Since it would be impossible to force China or India to meet the same standards the West self-imposes in this scenario, you are essentially asking Western individuals to pay a higher cost of living for NO net carbon reductions. This mandate will disproportionately affect poor people.
As a result I don't see how anyone expects radical carbon reduction policies to receive support from the Western world. I do not see how this is a rational course of action for an individual voter or for any developed economy.
> How do you define what an appropriate per capita CO2 budget is?
Negotiation of elected represenatatives constraint by a total budget.
> Is it different for someone from China, India, and the US?
Yes.
> What about the difference between individuals from rural agricultural communities vs a large city?
This is something that should be respected when the country allocations are made. However the distribution in the country itself is subject to decisions in the country.
> If non-western countries have the 'right' to increase carbon emissions why don't poorer people in Western countries have the 'right' to increase their emissions?
Because countries with unequal wealth distributions shouldn't be rewarded or allowed to externalize (by taking up more CO2 budget) their societal wealth distriubtution. However in terms of allocation of the budget in the country i would find poorer people getting more a workable solution.
> What is the target level for developing economics?
Being able work afford cost due to climate change. Being able to live a live without deprivation. Such that people won't need to be prevented at gun point from fleeing into the richer countries. That be a good start.
> How does it make sense to mandate Western countries go to net-zero while all developing countries continue to dramatically increase per capita emissions?
Because the consequences otherwise are ugly. The western countries could of course invest heavily to into developing countries with the goal to direct their growth. However i am not sure collolianlist meddling will be appreciated by people in developing countries.
> Since it would be impossible to force China or India to meet the same standards the West self-imposes in this scenario, you are essentially asking Western individuals to pay a higher cost of living for NO net carbon reductions. This mandate will disproportionately affect poor people.
If the mandate will disproportionately affect poor people it was implemented badly on a inner country basis. Inside your country you can do redistribution to make it less impactfull on poor people.
> I do not see how this is a rational course of action for an individual voter or for any developed economy.
Yeah, it is a case of a tragedy of the (unmanaged) commons. I don't think that this approach is feasible but i adopt this position none the less as any compromise which i am a part of will be pulled in a direction i find preferable for all mankind according to my ethics. I choose my position to optimize the resulting compromise.
Let’s say I’m from Netherlands and create dozens of companies, local, nearshore and offshore to both reduce the taxes I pay and to top up my carbon emission quota.
Clearly we're talking about different interpretations of "taxing carbon". I'm quite uninformed, but the simplest thing would be to tax fossil fuel companies per unit of raw fossil fuel they extract from the ground. That's it. They can't lie about how much they extracted: that's securities fraud. Splitting into smaller companies, offshoring, IP licensing or other elaborate tax avoidance mechanisms don't work because you aren't taxing "net income" or anything else that can be gamed.
If a country refuses to impose the same tax on its domestic fossil fuel extractors, tariff or embargo all of its exports until it complies.
This will only work if the biggest importers start doing this right away.
Who enforces the taxes? The same parties who are doing most of the polluting. The military, government, the technocrats in control of the systems.
Just. Tax. It. puts more power in the hands of the people causing the problems.
On the other hand, what if the climate change was primarily driven by natural cycles? Taxing everybody would have a negative impact on the populations' readiness & survivability to these changes. Many people already do not trust big government to be beneficial & responsive to their needs, for good reason. Making living even more difficult for the population by increasing taxes would only cause more to reject the systems that bind them.
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It seems like the downvotes, are related to some Epistimological blind spots on the part of the downvoters.
>what if the climate change was primarily driven by natural cycles?
What if climate change was perpetuated by giant sloths who want to drive humans to extinction? We can play the “what if” game and I think it’s important to keep an open mind in science, but to quote Walter Kotschnig, not so open that our brains fall out.
We can use a bit of Bayesian inference here. Given the current data, the probability of natural cycles (or ground sloths) being the root cause seems low. Given the potential risk, hanging our hat on that small chance seems like an irrational choice. Or a potential one that just reduces our cognitive dissonance so we feel better about ourselves.
I know there’s many people who bristle at the thought of any authority outside of themselves but that can become an epistemological bias in its own right.
Likewise, the comment adds very little to the discussion because the compliment can be said with equal validity.
”-The free market- puts more power in the hands of the people causing the problems.”
Can easily extend to individual consumers just as your statement points the finger at government
> What if climate change was perpetuated by giant sloths who want to drive humans to extinction?
Then we should question the assertion & by directly seeing giant sloths, one can know that giant sloths are indeed destroying the climate. However, we don't have any direct evidence that humans are causing the climate to change. We have direct evidence that solar cycles, geomagnetic field effects, & the general naturally occurring cycles do affect the climate directly, and always have throughout Earth's history. Instead, we have institutional funding directly incentivizing an opinion, which is "humans are the primary driver in climate change". If many scientists don't have that opinion, those scientists don't have a career.
We can use Bayesian inference to understand that the climates in other planets in the Solar System is also changing. Given that humans, to my knowledge, do not populate other planets in the Solar System, that makes the probability of natural cycles are the primary driver of climate change quite high. Given the potential & historically validated risk of tyrannical governments & class warfare causing genocide & mass effects on the broader population, hanging our hat on the small chance that the same people who lie all the time are now telling the truth in this one case, despite their contradictory actions, seems like an irrational choice.
I know that there's many people who want us all to just follow the self-imposed authority figures because they benefit from that arrangement, but that can become an epistemological bias in it's own right.
Likewise, this comment above adds very little to the discussion, because it seeks to distract from the central point, which is about people of power & wealth using lies, fear-mongering, shaming, & pseudo-intellectual arguments to gain even more power over everybody else.
> Can easily extend to individual consumers under a completely free-market solution.
Can also easily extend to the institutions directly responsible for the social conditions, such as the military, banking establishment, political figures, bureaucrats, technocrats, etc. The increasing consumptive behavior of these classes of people directly contradicts the "crisis" we are all facing.
If the people in power who caused these problems really are concerned about the "crisis", they should give up ALL of their power over others so the broader spirit of humanity can solve the problems that they have caused.
And my offer still stands. Give me Trillions of dollars of wealth & liquid cash and I will gladly save you from the problems that I say you created. I'll even include some statistics & Science in that package deal!
Which do you think we have more robust data about, Earth or other planets in the solar system? The amount of data has a large impact on Bayesian inference…
What, in your opinion, would be the correct way to measure direct human impact on climate? Until very recently, we didn’t have direct measurement of the Higgs particle and yet we were able to do wonderful things inferring the strength of gravity by other means. Point being, I’m not yet convinced your bar for knowledge is appropriate.
And my comment is not meant to distract from your point about central government but rather to question the strength of the basis of the claim. On the contrary, I felt your comment was a classic misinformation tactic but I was trying to employ the tack that every downvote deserves a response
> Which do you think we have more robust data about, Earth or other planets in the solar system? The amount of data has a large impact on Bayesian inference…
This is not a question of robustness of data. This is a question of commonalities. If there is significant climate change occurring on other planets, one can infer that there are influences outside of the planet.
> What, in your opinion, would be the correct way to measure direct human impact on climate?
Well, we can measure water pollution due to run-offs of industrial waste. These measures are well established, obvious, & there is a history of direct evidence & scientific consensus that mercury and pesticide run-off causes problems to the ecosystem & human health. CO2 in the atmosphere & it's direct effects, not so much. There has been plenty of credible scientific opposition. The problem is there is too much money riding on the opinion that CO2 is the #1 existential problem facing humanity so the credible voices in opposition are drowned out on an institutional level.
> we didn’t have direct measurement of the Higgs particle and yet we were able to do wonderful things inferring the strength of gravity by other means
What makes you so sure that physical reality is composed of particles. This is an atomist bias. Fields are another way of looking at physical reality. For example, our electrical equations are based on fields & can be applied to unify different phenomona.
> being, I’m not yet convinced your bar for knowledge is appropriate.
If I had $Trillions of wealth, I could easily hire people & even peer groups who have a reasonable "bar of knowledge" & incentivize them to have the "appropriate" opinion; meanwhile push out the non-believers, I mean those who have the "inappropriate" opinion, from key roles while filling those roles with people of "appropriate" opinion. In the meantime, a series of propaganda, I mean PR, campaigns through the various organs that $Trillions could influence would convince you to think "appropriately" as well. My offer still stands...
> And my comment is not meant to distract from your point about central government but rather to question the strength of the basis of the claim. On the contrary, I felt your comment was a classic misinformation tactic but I was trying to employ the tack that every downvote deserves a response
According to your view, which is biased, any opposition & questioning of Epistemology is considered "misinformation". Yes, do not think outside the narrow confines of your worldview, or it's "misinformation". I bet if you took my offer, gave me $Trillions, you would not think what I say is "misinformation" within at most a couple of years.
But. Just. Tax. It. Very credible. Begging the question is "not appropriate", only the tax money is flowing my way...
Hard disagree. Especially when you double down on the Bayesian part. Robustness of data is directly proportional to the strength of a belief in Bayesian inference. Your point here reads as someone looking for confirmation bias. After finding one “commonality” of data, one can exclaim “Eureka” and not have to confront uncomfortable and conflicting data. That’s not good science.
>There has been plenty of credible scientific opposition.
A strong claim that should probably be backed up with citations. And balanced against the credibly of data against the claim. Because, after all, science is almost never in 100% agreement. There are still credible scientists who disavow the link between HIV and AIDs; would that be enough for you to roll the dice on that issue?
>What makes you so sure that physical reality is composed of particles.
Who said I am? Or, for that matter, that I believe fields and particles are mutually exclusive? This is another one of those seemingly purposeful digressions from the actual point of inference and precisely why I thought you were treading the well-worn tracks of misinformation tactics. In a similar vein, you never actually said what your bar for changing your mind is, you just redirected into attempts sowing doubt. So I’ll ask again, more directly: what information would you need to change your mind? My experience is that when people are unable to clearly articulate their position here, it’s because they are overly dogmatic and it almost becomes a faith issue rather than a reasoned one.
>In the meantime, a series of propaganda...
There's a certain amount of skepticism that is healthy but there is also a tipping point where one becomes so skeptical of everything that it just becomes more convenient to wear a tin-foil hat because one can never be 100% certain. To circle back, I think it's wise to go with the preponderance of data when in doubt and try as hard as we can to resist irrational bias.
>According to your view, which is biased...
Yes, every human view is biased to a certain extent. That's part of being human. Which is more to the point that it's better to err on the side of the data. Even if it flies in the face of what you want the conclusion to be. I'd encourage anyone to think outside the confines of one's worldview, but that maverick-i-ness doesn't absolve one from needing data to back it up.
>But. Just. Tax. Very credible.
This was read as a pragmatic argument and I don't find pragmatism to lack credibility. I’m not sure your point here; is your stance that taxes are immoral or illegal?
>Begging the question is "not appropriate"
(Not really begging the question in the literal sense of the phrase unless I'm failing to see the circular argument related to taxation) Bringing up a question is fine, but it came across more as making a statement without any actual convincing argument or data is not
> Hard disagree. Especially when you double down on the Bayesian part. Robustness of data is directly proportional to the strength of a belief in Bayesian inference. Your point here reads as someone looking for confirmation bias. After finding one “commonality” of data, one can exclaim “Eureka” and not have to confront uncomfortable and conflicting data. That’s not good science.
If you care about data, why are temperatures falling in many places on Earth? Why is there increased volcanic activity? What about the Grand Solar Minimum? What about the Geomagnetic excursion? Did you know that Greenland has been gaining ice mass into this summer? Even with temperature stations being placed in the middle of asphalt parking lots & next to AC vents, the temperature data still needs to be manipulated to fit the narrative. Why has measured global temperature fallen despite CO2 rising in the past decade? How has technological change affected CO2, temperature, & astronomical measurement over the past few centuries?
> A strong claim that should probably be backed up with citations
You can do your own research on this. The late Freeman Dyson has some excellent analysis over his skepticism. With the current batch of scientists, it's about having a career. There is no scientific career in being an APGW skeptic, because the market is flooded with grant money going to APGW proponents. Even the incumbent oil companies want to corner the market using regulations. The skeptics are mainly grass-roots. It's David (skeptics) vs Goliath (the Industrial Complex).
> what information would you need to change your mind?
I want to be paid $Trillions to change my mind, like how your system is being fed with $Trillions to perpetuate your lies. I want all of the money returned to & compensation to the tax-payers, consumers, & people adversely affected by policies, taxes, & loss of freedom. I want action to protect the public against naturally occurring climate change, which includes the Grand Solar Minimum, Geomagnetic Excursion, increased Solar & Cosmic ionic bombardments, increased volcanic activity, supply chain disruptions. I want decreased regulation & decreased taxation. I want regional & redundant food production grown by the people, free from binding laws & regulations, some of which prevent fruit trees & crops from being grown. I want the environmental movement to focus on clean water, clean air, regenerative practices, holding industry accountable for pollution, not this CO2 canard which only funnels wealth to the powerful, while serving polluting & monopolistic industrial interests. I want poverty to be a thing of the past. There is no reason for scarcity among so many people in the world, other than hoarding & systems of impoverishment by the few so-called elites.
> There's a certain amount of skepticism that is healthy but there is also a tipping point where one becomes so skeptical of everything that it just becomes more convenient to wear a tin-foil hat because one can never be 100% certain. To circle back, I think it's wise to go with the preponderance of data when in doubt and try as hard as we can to resist irrational bias.
False & misleading data should be discarded from the conversation. Just because one worldview has captured some institutions, does not mean that the worldview is correct. It's easy to cherry-pick & not be transparent with data-collection when there's group-think backed by money. The IPCC has been wrong with their predictions. The global average temperature is cyclical & has already crested. How many times has snow being a "thing of the past" been proclaimed? There's been many doomsday prognostications by APGW proponents over the decades which never come to pass. At what point do we say "enough, leave us alone, no you can't have my money, fuck off"?
> Yes, every human view is biased to a certain extent. That's part of being human. Which is more to the point that it's better to err on the side of the data. Even if it flies in the face of what you want the conclusion to be. I'd encourage anyone to think outside the confines of one's worldview, but that maverick-i-ness doesn't absolve one from needing data to back it up.
The data needs to be interpreted. The raw data should be available. The data needs to be put in context. There good reason why grass-roots skepticism has been growing despite $Billions being poured into APGW propaganda & overwhelming institutional lock-step agendas. Your favorite institutions can flood the public with false, manipulated, & inconsistent data and some people will be convinced. However, not everybody will be convinced, especially those who are adversely affected by the increased regulations. If there was no reason to be skeptical as you seem to imply, there would not be so many people being skeptical.
> This was read as a pragmatic argument and I don't find pragmatism to lack credibility. I’m not sure your point here; is your stance that taxes are immoral or illegal?
How is stealing money from the public to benefit the powerful for duplicitous reasons "pragmatic"? Are the powerful ever held accountable for their actions or will they continue to jet-set, yacht, & own/utilize multiple mansions around the world in plain view?
> Bringing up a question is fine
Bringing up a question is never fine with you people because you have an agenda to take money from the public to enrich yourselves. I get it, it's the law of the jungle or something like that. Take from others to enrich yourself. Just don't expect us to comply with your edicts, no matter how much false & inconsistent data you throw our way.
We have warmed the earth because we love comfort and money. We will never stop loving those things. So instead let's use the same systems to fix this (or at least slow things down).
As an individual my largest carbon impact is air travel. I like to go places, it's one of the main things I work to afford. Every single plane ticket I take should have a tax which is used to offset or capture the carbon emissions of my flight. I will pay it. Anyone not willing to pay it will have to fly less. Any airlines that can't operate under the tax will not operate.
Now do the same thing for corporate polluters, packaging waste, etc. If a country won't do this for domestic goods we can at least impose climate tariffs at borders.
The only other thing that could work is some fantastic new technological solution, but let's not wait for that.