My favorite strategy was changing spending to subsidize rail over roads, subsidize and market bicycles, and push for electric cars. Not directly applicable necessarily, but the number of things that have lower co2 production as a side effect is pretty large.
Instead there should be a tax on taking carbon out of the ground or importing it into the country. A tax so high that it becomes economically unviable to do it. Anything else is political games.
Doesn't that have the same problem? Anything energy intensive just shifts outside of the borders of that country where the tax is enforced.
IMO, carbons taxes need to be built into the trade deals. You need to say "we're creating a level playing field between our countries, but we do that on the basis that we are both going to do our bit to solve common problems".
The major reason tackling climate change is difficult is because it is a tragedy of the commons.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/february/kolstad-carbon-t...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/power-plant...
If the idea is to just give it back to the people that paid into it, that completelt defeats the entire purpose.
The question is why are you giving rebates to people who are mostly using green energy?
And it's not "giving rebate" it's returning tax revenues to those that can least afford them.
But there are many other sources of carbon than poorly planned electrical systems. Driving, flying, and industry.
Are you rewarding people for using less carbon or is the rebate to help offset the cost past through from companies passing on the extra tax onto consumers? Two different claims are being made.
That is, putting a price on carbon will result in businesses either putting up prices, or choosing lower emission production options. All other things being equal, this should result in having lower emission companies having a pricing edge, and then consumers picking those products.
So? Consumption (of fossil fuels) is the problem. Any policy measure that cuts fossil fuel consumption will thus necessarily be regressive to the extent that it precisely targets the problem. It's not like cap-and-trade or efficiency mandates somehow avoid that.
But whatever anti-fossil-fuel measure you impose can be mitigated with orthogonal welfare policies.
Also, it's not policy options can ever lack downsides.
[1] I saw "considered" because the traditional result only gets that by a confused accounting basis. Yes, a consumption tax hits less of a rich person's income, but it hits the same amount of their later consumption. Don't compare income apples to consumption oranges.
Personally I think poor people tend to be in this sort of budgetary Malthusian squeeze. If you raise the price of one thing then something else will have to give. Tax their gasoline more the end result is they'll buy 'less car' and have less money left over for rent. Since rents are likely the only other fungible cost that's where the money will ultimately come from.
When father came home, his son announced that vodka would cost 50% more and said:
- Father, does it mean that you are going to drink less?
- No son, it means that you are going to eat less.
So in reality, about 30% are in a fairly serious pinch nearly all the time and 50% are probably doing OK, but still having to watch their budgets pretty closely. Only 30% of the population has the kind of earnings that people on HN generally consider acceptable.
Let's say that energy which doesn't liberate much carbon is 20% more expensive than carbon intensive energy (who knows). Really, only 30% of the population can easily swallow that cost increase. And even then, if we are talking about replacing cars, etc, etc the capital costs are actually outside the reach of a large percentage of those people (imagine being told that you have to replace your car today... could you afford it?)
In reality, if only the people who could afford it switched, it would not actually represent a large reduction in carbon usage. You have to disproportionately affect lower income brackets because that's were the vast majority of people live.
So if you tax carbon to make it attractive to switch, it's really not any more expensive. The main issue is making sure that people are able to deal with the capital expenses. Otherwise they won't switch. So IMHO, you are correct that carbon tax alone won't be enough. But there isn't really a downside to such a tax as long as you find a way to deal with capital expenses. In order to be successful, the poor must switch to the more expensive option.