Who wants to get taxed more? Answer: Democrat Bay Area Environmentalists & cheese eating surrender monkeys
Yet they seem to be wealthier and healthier than the poor folk voting against their interests in the middle of the country.
Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
51–60 of 139 posts
Re: Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
#52Carbon tax becomes a peculiar piece of legislation when viewed from Pirate Party's perspective (not necessarily that I agree with it, no ad hominem please). According to Rick Falkvinge [1] legislation must:
* Be targeted at a problem
* Solve the problem
* Not create other problems in best case, worse problems in worst case
* Be evidence based
Does it solve a problem? At least not directly. Taxes on tobacco and alcohol do not eliminate consumption, prohibition in US created a Mafia, jail-time for drug possession does not eliminate consumption, we have hard evidence confirming that.
Such tax hinders accessibility, though. Since at least transportation is fossil fuel dependant, more or less everything (commodities including: food, public transportation) will get more expensive, thus less accessible.
Do we have hard evidence (numbers, not general economic speculation) that x level carbon tax will lower carbon emissions by y?
[1]: http://falkvinge.net/pirate-wheel/principles/quality-legisla...
Re: Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
The poor are going to suffer the most if we allow runaway global warming.
What if climate change turns out to be real, and caused by man, but not harmful to humans soon? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-wi... EDIT: downvoting this because you don't agree with it won't make it go away. Scientific American isn't Fox News!
Then we will all be very luck but the next generation won't thank us for doing nothing.
Re: Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aren't there significant carbon emissions released during the production of a Tesla car and its components?
After accounting for emissions during manufacturing, even if you powered an electric car with coal power only, carbon emissions of an electric car are roughly a 25-30 MPG car equivalent. However, those numbers get much better as the electric power generation mix improves (at both the car factory and your garage). In California, now, an electric car is about equivalent to a 70 MPG car. Note that significant efforts ar…
I think it's a bootstrapping issue. What does one do first when they want an entirely new power ecosystem? I would argue it's wiser to start with the sexy public facing segment on the demand side (awesome looking electric sports cars) and have the public start this exact conversation and demand the infrastructure changes. Because it seems like a pretty steep climb for one to try to make this huge change simply by supply side first.
Re: Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
#55I used to think that carbon taxes were the way to go, but I have seen how effective the fossil fuel industry is at creating FUD. When you consider an effective carbon tax makes all their assets worthless it is not surprising that they will do whatever it takes to block anything other than a nominal carbon tax. There really is only one way to get past the fossil fuel industry and that is to buy them out. Given the ben…
This is a point which gets overlooked pretty often.
It's the same as the value of taxi medallions in the Uber debate. Allowing Uber to operate in a city where technically only medallion owners were supposed to drive is actually really shitty to the owners of those medallions. You open it up, suddenly tell them that their investment is worthless because of a change in regulations. It's really unfair to them. Perhaps the way to quiet the medallion owners would be to pay them like 25% or 50% of what they were worth earlier in compromise bill allowing Uber in. They don't feel so slighted, everyone else gets Uber. That's win-win.
How it would work in this case: pass a compromise bill which involves paying these companies some amount of cash so their shareholders won't feel so slighted. They will give up their fight against carbon taxes, and we avert global catastrophe.
Re: Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
#56Carbon tax becomes a peculiar piece of legislation when viewed from Pirate Party's perspective (not necessarily that I agree with it, no ad hominem please). According to Rick Falkvinge [1] legislation must: * Be targeted at a problem * Solve the problem * Not create other problems in best case, worse problems in worst case * Be evidence based Carbon emission is considered a problem because it contributes to climate c…
You don't have to reduce carbon emissions to zero to solve global warming, you just have to discourage emissions to some degree. That is exactly what a carbon tax does. It directly solves the problem.
Revenue-neutral tax is the key to dismissing the point about accessibility. You can take the tax revenue and mostly give it to poor people who are hurt the most by the tax.
Re: Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
The poor are going to suffer the most if we allow runaway global warming.
What if climate change turns out to be real, and caused by man, but not harmful to humans soon? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-wi... EDIT: downvoting this because you don't agree with it won't make it go away. Scientific American isn't Fox News!
Then we really lucked out, although it would still be a bummer about the corals. (And shell fish, acidification is already disrupting oyster farming in Washington)
Re: Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it's revenue neutral and lowering income taxes, where would the big `victims' be?
The answer used to be "aluminum smelters" (aluminum, aka "frozen electricity"). Interestingly, the aluminum smelters in the mountains behind Portland closed down when the datacenters moved in and bought all the cheap hydro electricity they used to use. My guess is that a tax increase on electricity will hit the Google/Facebook/Amazon/Apple/Microsoft and other "cloud businesses" pretty hard...
Doubt it. If the price of electricity goes up 20%, the cost of computing goes up I don't know anyone who would go out of business if their server bill went up 20%, especially if it went up the same for their competitors.
Re: Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
#59I don't think will ever work. There are countries where taxes are way higher than US. For example in Italy [1] we are around 50% (including VAT and local taxes) and other than decreasing the productivity of companies it never had a "mind" impact. In fact Italy is one of the countries with most cars (per citizen) and that invest less/nothing in alternative energies.
[1] https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/services/tax/tax-tools-and-...
Re: Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
#60also can be read as "Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate Sales of My Extremely Expensive Vehicles"