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Why Carbon Taxes Work

timharford.com

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Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#91

Post by mavhc »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #86
mavhc wrote: post #2

As long as the pollution tax is higher than the cost to clean up the pollution it works, because then the company cleans up the pollution for you. Also massive incentives to reduce pollution, and reduce cost of pollution cleaning technologies.

Except who actually pays the tax? Energy consumers, which is anyone who needs electricity or fuel for their household. You just don't see it in the explanation of why your electric rates went up 50-100%. Or, if it doesn't go up, you start living with brown outs and blackouts like California.

The consumers, they pay all for everything after all.

The point is to stop companies cheating by polluting for free to make their product cheaper at our expense

Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#92

Post by dane-pgp »

roenxi wrote: post #83
dane-pgp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Markets are really good at putting competent but unpopular people in charge which is a better strategy. It's only a better strategy if your goal is to increase the wealth and power of the largest entities, i.e. corporations and the rich. If your goals include "popular" ideas like human rights and a non-polluted biosphere, then it can be better to make market participants share their power with elected politicians.

How is capitalism supposed to work against people's human rights? The capitalists haven't had an enforcement arm since the days of the East India Company. If human rights are getting systematically abused it is pretty much necessary that someone in government is responsible. They control the police and the army. Capitalism didn't produce Guantanamo bay; for example.

> How is capitalism supposed to work against people's human rights?

By "capitalism" I assume we are still talking about "unrestrained corporate power". As such, I would remind you that corporations after often found guilty of wage theft, unsafe working conditions, unfair dismissal, spying on employees, and discriminatory hiring practices. None of those practices are strictly necessary for capitalism to function, but letting markets put "competent" people in charge is not going to prevent those abuses from happening.

> The capitalists haven't had an enforcement arm since the days of the East India Company.

I think you haven't been keeping up with modern developments of this practice.[0]

> If human rights are getting systematically abused it is pretty much necessary that someone in government is responsible.

So you agree that it is the government's responsibility to limit the actions of companies to prevent them from harming human rights? I think we're on the same page then.

[0] https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/PrivateSecurityOve...

Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#93

Post by ThunderSizzle »

mavhc wrote: post #91
ThunderSizzle wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except who actually pays the tax? Energy consumers, which is anyone who needs electricity or fuel for their household. You just don't see it in the explanation of why your electric rates went up 50-100%. Or, if it doesn't go up, you start living with brown outs and blackouts like California.

The consumers, they pay all for everything after all. The point is to stop companies cheating by polluting for free to make their product cheaper at our expense

That's not what will happen. The consumers have to pay for electricity, otherwise your sending them back to the stoneage.

Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#94

Post by throwaway599281 »

occz wrote: post #31
throwaway599281 wrote: post #20

Another tax on the middle class, because they don't have enough of a fiscal burden already, in the goods they need, in paying gas when they drive to work (no, not everyone has a very green public transportation that gets them to work in an efficient fashion). Do these people even know the carbon footprint of manufacturing a solar panel or a wind mill for their "green" energy? I do agree that products should be manufa…

>Another tax on the middle class, because they don't have enough of a fiscal burden already, in the goods they need, in paying gas when they drive to work (no, not everyone has a very green public transportation that gets them to work in an efficient fashion). So build it, then. You have lots of money available to construct it from your carbon tax, and even more money when you stop subsidizing the ridiculously expens…

>So build it, then. You have lots of money available to construct it from your carbon tax, and even more money when you stop subsidizing the ridiculously expensive car-oriented infrastructure.

You don't know what you're talking about. And just because you're ignorant doesn't make me argue in bad faith.

Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#95

Post by occz »

throwaway599281 wrote: post #94
occz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Another tax on the middle class, because they don't have enough of a fiscal burden already, in the goods they need, in paying gas when they drive to work (no, not everyone has a very green public transportation that gets them to work in an efficient fashion). So build it, then. You have lots of money available to construct it from your carbon tax, and even more money when you stop subsidizing the ridiculously expens…

>So build it, then. You have lots of money available to construct it from your carbon tax, and even more money when you stop subsidizing the ridiculously expensive car-oriented infrastructure. You don't know what you're talking about. And just because you're ignorant doesn't make me argue in bad faith.

I do know what I'm talking about - and we can conclude on the basis of your statements on renewable energy production that you either don't know what your talking about (willfully ignorant) or that you're attempting to willfully sabotage the conversation.

Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#96

Post by sleepysysadmin »

Gasoline prices have little impact on demand. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=19191

For this reason alone Carbon taxes do not work. In my jurisdiction, we already have over 100% tax on gasoline. Partly for road building purposes, but still obviously not impacting usage.

Hybrids coming around ~2000 certainly had a visible effect but it wasn't enough. Which is why Rivian, a company which has delivered no cars, is worth 97 billion. Tesla is worth a trillion. Whereas Ford is only worth $78 billion. We must get to EV transportation asap. We must electrify our railroads. We must electrify our planes.

In fact, carbon taxes are bad. Very bad right now. Because prices are inelastic it makes the tax regressive and anti-compounding.

So gasoline prices go up. Trucking immediately is more expensive. Products prices go up. But because product prices are higher, inflation etc. trucking gets more expensive. Alberta recently had a carbon tax and allowed this circle to run for some time. An interesting thing happened. The prices didn't go higher. This is a problem. The price available to oil value crashed instead. So while WTI was about $50/barrel. WCS from Alberta went to $5/barrel. The albertan oil industry couldn't sell their oil. The trucks weren't running. Alberta repealed their carbon tax which nearly immediately fixed the problem. Their economy was basically halted. No trucks running means people will soon stop eating.

Imagine 10 years from now. We have maybe 30% of vehicles gone EV. Who owns those? The rich. The rich no longer pay the 100% tax for building roads. Who is paying for the road tax and carbon tax? the poor buggers driving the 15 year old shitmobile. The poor end up paying and the rich dont? Pretty regressive.

Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#97

Post by jaybrendansmith »

This used to be a conservative and Republican idea. I'm grown up enough to admit that they are right: The market is absolutely the best way to decide who pays based on the cost of the externality, in this case, Kg of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. We need this to start now, so it can be phased in over 10 years. We need to get all the big nations to jump off this cliff with us at the same time. The alternative is crazy. Yes there will be winners and losers, there always are. It will be very hard on some folks in the midwest, and the 150 coal miners left, and the fossil fuel companies and people in that industry. I hope they've all diversified into solar and wind by now. It's all too late, they suppressed this change for 20 years now. In that time, average temperature has risen by .8 degrees where I live. Time to put on the big boy pants and make the hard decisions, folks.

Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#98

Post by p_l »

gefhfff wrote: post #24
lovemenot wrote: post #7

Global warming is a global problem. While carbon tax would be levied locally, creating incentives to just shift production to low or no tax locations. Just as harmonisation over Cororate Tax is finally emerging, similar cross-border agreements should be needed for a Carbon Tax.

As a country you also can enforce restrictions/taxes onto the whole supply chain, as a initial measure (can't be done by weak countries though). Of course, mid term everyone should push for global carbon pricing models Germany was the only country that seems to have understood this, given they were the only ones that advocated for it at COP.

There's a problem between non-tariff measures and tariffs, with carbon taxing being too obviously a tariff measure. And you can't just throw in a tariff thanks to WTO rules, especially if it wouldn't apply to countries that do collect carbon tax - WTO requires that tariffs are applied the same to all countries except through certain bilateral trade treaties. Which is workable, but makes for considerable stumbling block in "quick apply" of carbon tax

Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#99

Post by timbit42 »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #86
mavhc wrote: post #2

As long as the pollution tax is higher than the cost to clean up the pollution it works, because then the company cleans up the pollution for you. Also massive incentives to reduce pollution, and reduce cost of pollution cleaning technologies.

Except who actually pays the tax? Energy consumers, which is anyone who needs electricity or fuel for their household. You just don't see it in the explanation of why your electric rates went up 50-100%. Or, if it doesn't go up, you start living with brown outs and blackouts like California.

Consumers should switch to low carbon goods and services to avoid paying the carbon tax.

Re: Why Carbon Taxes Work

#100

Post by timbit42 »

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).

Yeah, you're right. We should just give up.
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