Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’

Any discussion of growth and cost has to be industry-specific. Obviously a carbon tax is bad for the oil industry and good for the solar industry -- that's the whole point. But you're assuming it would be bad for everyone else, which isn't actually true.

Consider what happens when you have a cross-subsidy like that. The oil and coal companies have a bunch of known reserves and existing infrastructure -- already explored, already built. When the new policy arrives, suddenly the cost of solar or wind goes from e.g. $.06/KWh to $.04/KWh, meanwhile the total cost of oil or coal-fired power generation goes from $.04/KWh to $.06/KWh -- at the previous market commodity prices. But nobody is going to pay $.06/KWh for oil or coal when they can get solar or wind for $.04/KWh, so if the fossil fuel industry wants to make any use of their existing reserves and existing infrastructure, they have to eat the entire difference out of their profits -- they have to charge $.04/KWh after-tax in order to continue to compete in the market.

So the first question is, should we feel sorry for them? No. If you built a coal-fired power plant in 1945 then you've more than recovered your investment already. If you built or acquired one in 2010, decades after we've known this was a problem, you get what you deserve.

So the initial effect is a transfer of profits from the fossil fuel industry to the non-fossil fuel energy industry, but no actual change in the price of electricity -- after all, it's revenue neutral. The government isn't keeping any of the money.

What happens next is that oil exploration ceases to exist. There is no point in searching for more oil if the pre-tax market price is $10/barrel; it's not profitable. They'll sell the reserves they have for whatever they can get because what else are they going to do with them, but then they're done -- that's the whole idea. Meanwhile there is a huge boom in renewables because all the profits are there now -- all the profits the oil producers would have had are going to install solar panels instead.

So what does that make energy costs look like in ten or twenty years? Well, the two effects mostly cancel out. The existing oil and coal reserves get used up and not replaced, but in the meantime we're building non-fossil alternatives to replace them, using the money we're not paying to the oil producers. It's likely that the price would be slightly higher, because otherwise it's what the market would have done without the tax (though that is actually already happening somewhat because the prices are already pretty close), but the net result isn't a huge price differential because they're countervailing forces.

The major effect is what happens to the people who own the existing oil reserves. But notice that these are predominantly countries we don't really love, like Russia and Saudi Arabia. So the main effect is to transfer wealth from those countries to the local economy where you create jobs installing renewable energy infrastructure, which is an effect that significantly outweighs -- is net economically positive -- against a slight increase in generating costs, for any country that is not a large net oil exporter.

And that's assuming an increase in demand for renewables doesn't bring any economies of scale that could bring the price down below the existing energy market price.

Renewables will help significantly in reducing the power plant power issue. Sure. But we haven’t solved the storage problem, which means that at night we need gas/coal. When there’s no wind we need gas/coal.

Any tax will be passed on to consumers, if not in full then in part. This will of course drive people to use it less, which is good. Except that if people stop consuming, we have a problem....

Human demand for consumables is just starting to ramp up. Total power produced, total plastics produced, total chemicals used, total waste generated are just small portions of what they will end up - based on growth projections for countries like India and China.

7% growth means a doubling of materials use in a decade, over a population much larger than the first world.

That means the number of plane tickets, international trips, shipping containers, iPhones, batteries and inflatable mattresses - will go up. The carbon cost for most of these items is never calculated, and it’s convenient to push production to places where the laws can be ignored.

Further - Most of that growth investment has been done on the backs of debt.

when we tell people that they will become more expensive, people will be unhappy, and they will buy less.

Therefore Business owners are unhappy, lenders are unhappy which means politicians are unhappy.

Our current consumption patterns are not sustainable, but stopping them is political and economic suicide.

The circular loop at play here ensures that nothing will happen, because the costs are too high.

Ok I think I got what you meant - yes, there are some people who see the headlines and ONLY the headlines. That’s something that applies to laymen- despair in the experts and scientists themselves ? That’s unheard of. And this isn’t the only article or source.

I’m not sure what you mean by “calling this stuff out.”

We are going to see the barrier reef die in our life time. Even the weakest carbon targets have been ignored and world consensus has failed.

And this is before Most of the developing world has come online, so human consumption is not even close to its peak.

We are already seeing displacement, and fish stocks world wide are plummeting.

Look no one believed 2008 was coming, because the economy is a complex system which looked to be fine.

The environment is the same. Eventually there’s going to be a failure cascade. The depth and natural complexity of it is being hollowed out, or overwhelmed.

I'm too old to believe "Markets will fix it" anymore, now I need to see the fine print, and then figure out how the economic game will look after the third play through.

Secondly, this doesn't obviate the need for additional power - you will still be burning coal/etc. You will use it less as a % of total power output. But if your power output increases (which it will, since most of humanity doesn't have power today), you are still looking at a potential increase.

I assume we are not including cars/busses because we expect electric cars to fix that.

However, flight and shipping will remain oil based.

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I love your points and the enthusiasm with which you make them, I think you need to consider your model with bad actors playing it, and you need to consider the self referential aspects of this model.

For example

1) More cheap power means more use of that power. Imagine millions more tamagotchis, or fans which can be kept running nonstop, or other items which are now affordable because power is cheaper.

Case in point - bitcoin miners are today limited by the cost of power. Every efficiency gain in power production, results in more bitcoin miners being added to the system. Every increase in power, results in people dropping out of the system.

2) The economic game is played over several rounds. In the best case scenario, the 3 players (consumers, regulators, producers) are in even tension.

But if producers get rich enough (or even earlier), they can regularly suppress regulators and get away with not paying taxes, polluting without worry and so on.

They can also just straight up reject options like carbon taxes, saying that it will not work for them.

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To make my point clear to you -

The set up of the game is such that no player is in a position to put their foot down! Any player that makes that call is removed from the game

Observe the set up of the game

1) Financers

2) consumers

3) Producers

4) Regulators

5) Politicians

Contracts and obligations guarantee that the interests of financers will be met by producers - in short, the necessity of global growth is backed up by contracts and loans.

The producers of industries, regulators, and politicians regularly ignore many of the primary concequences of polluting industries (the tradgedy of the commons, and this is worse in developing nations which dont have the resources to afford or keep regulators safe)

Any politician which ends up proposing a tax increase, will need massive consumer support - but this is eventually self harming.

Those consumers need jobs, an effective carbon tax would severely harm growth prospects, and thus job creation in an economy.

This means that people will eventually vote this govt out, because they want growth.

FInancers and producers will collude to fund people who support their goals.

Your "foot down" cant happen, because the game is not set up to allow that behavior.

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