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Why Carbon Taxes Work

timharford.com

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Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#51

Post by roenxi »

yunohn wrote: post #41
ajuc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't stop global warming - it's not going to be pretty either. And taxing rich, while a good idea - won't solve the problem, because there's so few of them that it won't matter, nevermind how exuberant they CO2 emissions are. So basically choose your poison or hope for magic tech to appear soon.

> because there's so few of them that it won't matter What do you mean?? Literally, you could redistribute billionaire/millionaire wealth and it would be more useful than taxing the average person tens/hundreds of euros more, when they can barely afford to survive. In fact, ongoing taxation that reduces the loopholes that elites get away with, would be even more beneficial.

Wealth is numbers on a page. Chop fossil fuel use in half (picking a random ratio) and there physically isn't a way for everyone to maintain their lifestyle. They have to travel less, receive less goods and spend less on heating and cooling.

There may not be a way to make that burden fall on the rich. I'm not sure what percentage of a society's energy is spent on maintaining the lifestyles of the wealthy but it wouldn't be weird if it is low in absolute terms.

Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#52

Post by yunohn »

gefhfff wrote: post #45
yunohn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your viewpoint, but if you tax the common man such that they are unable to travel to work in the only car they can afford - the world will stop functioning. I often wonder why the elites don’t understand what their mistreatment of the proletariat will lead to…

Or they'll just move closer to work, or will implement Home Office, or will demand public transport (which can be combined with bicycles), or will drive electric (car, ebike, electric scooter/motor cycles) or will drive as groups instead of individuals, or a dividend will implemented making this scenario unlikely in the first place while still enabling carbon taxes.

> they'll just move closer to work

This is often way more expensive than paying for heating.

> will implement Home Office

This only works for well paying IT jobs. Not the working class that actually physically work at factories, stores, restaurants, hospitals, etc etc that are underpaid and hit the most by taxes.

> will demand public transport

Demands are cool and everything, but you can’t sit around jobless for 1-2 decades waiting for laws to pass and municipalities to build out the transport infrastructure.

> will drive electric

Very few cities have the infrastructure for this. Once that’s fixed, carbon taxation would work better.

> drive as groups instead of individuals

This already happens in Europe, but people are still wage slaves. It changes nothing.

Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#53

Post by gefhfff »

yunohn wrote: post #41
ajuc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't stop global warming - it's not going to be pretty either. And taxing rich, while a good idea - won't solve the problem, because there's so few of them that it won't matter, nevermind how exuberant they CO2 emissions are. So basically choose your poison or hope for magic tech to appear soon.

> because there's so few of them that it won't matter What do you mean?? Literally, you could redistribute billionaire/millionaire wealth and it would be more useful than taxing the average person tens/hundreds of euros more, when they can barely afford to survive. In fact, ongoing taxation that reduces the loopholes that elites get away with, would be even more beneficial.

That taxation is redistributing wealth (supporting climate change).

Reducing loopholes won't reduce carbon emissions. Internalizing the cost will, so I can't even imagine how this would be more beneficial. So, just do both

Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#54

Post by kspacewalk2 »

vasco wrote: post #4
kranke155 wrote: post #3

Carbon Taxes work because the market can't solve a problem it doesn't have a price for. Knowing the word "externality" is all you need to know. In the Adam Smith/Ayn Rand fantasy of money and the invisible hand, markets are a form of Artificial Intelligence. The fantasy is this AI can run the markets better than any centralized authority. Even if we assume that's true right now the AI has no price for carbon, can't t…

So who do you propose to be the centralized authority?

The governments. They recognize market failures and mitigate with things like the carbon tax. In fact, the whole concept of a market, even the traditional physical one, by definition implies regulation with enforcement (e.g. weights and measures). Without those, there's no market, there's just a free for all.

Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#55

Post by yunohn »

roenxi wrote: post #51
yunohn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because there's so few of them that it won't matter What do you mean?? Literally, you could redistribute billionaire/millionaire wealth and it would be more useful than taxing the average person tens/hundreds of euros more, when they can barely afford to survive. In fact, ongoing taxation that reduces the loopholes that elites get away with, would be even more beneficial.

Wealth is numbers on a page. Chop fossil fuel use in half (picking a random ratio) and there physically isn't a way for everyone to maintain their lifestyle. They have to travel less, receive less goods and spend less on heating and cooling. There may not be a way to make that burden fall on the rich. I'm not sure what percentage of a society's energy is spent on maintaining the lifestyles of the wealthy but it would…

> I'm not sure what percentage of a society's energy is spent on maintaining the lifestyles of the wealthy but it wouldn't be weird if it is low in absolute terms.

I think this is patently false; but even more generally, wealthier people and “developed” countries are the biggest polluters.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-r...

Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#56

Post by kranke155 »

roenxi wrote: post #13
kranke155 wrote: post #3

Carbon Taxes work because the market can't solve a problem it doesn't have a price for. Knowing the word "externality" is all you need to know. In the Adam Smith/Ayn Rand fantasy of money and the invisible hand, markets are a form of Artificial Intelligence. The fantasy is this AI can run the markets better than any centralized authority. Even if we assume that's true right now the AI has no price for carbon, can't t…

> The fantasy is this AI can run the markets better than any centralized authority. I agree with a literal reading of your comment, but will just point out that the wealthy countries all tend to be the ones that let the market do its thing though. We've got a lot of examples now of authoritarian vs free market (the Koreas, Germanys and China pre- and post- Deng Xiaoping leap to mind). People routinely do better when…

I never suggested that centralized authorities do better!

However, there is a convincing argument - made particularly well by the book "How Asia Works" - for a hybrid approach where the state "steers" the economy through nudges and incentives. The book makes the argument that's what happened in Korea, China and Japan. They, at least from their perspective, followed the example of German development.

Their source was the "Historical School" of economics - https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Historical_school...

Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#57

Post by yunohn »

surrehuet wrote: post #50
yunohn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If people need to get to work and heat their homes etc. then putting a tax on all of that will hit them hard while the rich will be relatively unaffected and can continue polluting. So much this. Here in NL, my heating bill is 70% tax and 30% gas charges (not exaggerating). The government claims to do this to encourage installation of better insulation and other energy saving measures - however, as a renter (like t…

If your gas bill is increased then your ability to spend money on rent decreases. Wouldn't this in turn decrease demand for energy ineffective apartments giving an incentive for landlords to take energy saving measures?

That only works in a balanced supply-demand market. Housing is an essential requirement, and is severely under serving demand in NL.

https://www.iamexpat.nl/housing/real-estate-news/urgent-call...

Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#58

Post by gefhfff »

yunohn wrote: post #52
gefhfff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they'll just move closer to work, or will implement Home Office, or will demand public transport (which can be combined with bicycles), or will drive electric (car, ebike, electric scooter/motor cycles) or will drive as groups instead of individuals, or a dividend will implemented making this scenario unlikely in the first place while still enabling carbon taxes.

> they'll just move closer to work This is often way more expensive than paying for heating. > will implement Home Office This only works for well paying IT jobs. Not the working class that actually physically work at factories, stores, restaurants, hospitals, etc etc that are underpaid and hit the most by taxes. > will demand public transport Demands are cool and everything, but you can’t sit around jobless for 1-2…

Another option: get work nearby.

Some jobs will also get pay raises if there is demand for them, but people can't afford to take them.

Working remote doesn't work just for IT, and I didn't claim everything works for everybody. And incrementally increased taxation will allow for planning.

Poor people have a low enough foot print to profit with a dividend anyways.

The real problem with carbon taxing is that it must be realized globally

Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#59

Post by lozenge »

chriswarbo wrote: post #39
schnitzelstoat wrote: post #5

I agree that externalities should be priced in - but I wonder if in practice Governments would end up footing the bill via subsidies. For example, look at what happened in France with the fuel tax rise which lead to the “gilets jaunes” protests. If people need to get to work and heat their homes etc. then putting a tax on all of that will hit them hard while the rich will be relatively unaffected and can continue pol…

We need to be wary of counter-productive moralising: > the rich will be relatively unaffected and can continue polluting If the tax revenue is spent on cleanup/offsetting/etc. then that doesn't matter. That's the point of the tax. In fact, if the tax is set slightly higher than the net cleanup cost, that (a) acts as a disincentive (rather than just 'cost of doing business'), and (b) we would want the rich to pollute…

Note, offsets don't clean up. They are just reducing emissions in our future compared to some other hypothetical future.

For example, giving out gas burning stoves to replace wood burning ones in a developing country can generate offsets. But who's to say we accurately forecast the chopped wood demand that was reduced by the program, and the gas demand that was increased by the program? Can we say 100% the recipients were not going to purchase these stoves themselves in their future? All incentives go to biasing the assumptions and printing as many offset certificates as possible.

To actually clean up we would need Direct Air Capture. The cost is 100+x higher than the usual cost of carbon offsets, and supply is very limited. The DAC industry would need to grow to a similar size (in terms of tonnes of product produced) as our current fossil fuel industry. But the output product, such as carbonate rock, would be useless, unlike fossil fuels. Its only use would be how it removed carbon from the air. I don't see anybody paying for that.

Source on the carbonate rock and scale of DAC industry: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Info on offsets accounting: https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/12/11/10-myths-net-ze...

Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#60

Post by rubinelli »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #29
wcoenen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why mechanisms like carbon tariffs on imports are being designed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Border_Adjustment_Mecha...

That seems like it could become very messy and open to fraud. The nice thing about carbon tariffs within borders is they would be trivial to implement because there are relatively few targets (oil wells, coal mines, etc).

Most messy problems can't be solved by neat solutions. Without tariffs, countries will be incentivized to use lax emission control as a competitive advantage.
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