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As California's attempts to tax mileage of hybrid and electric vehicles proves, if you create an additional source of revenue for the government, tax levels will bear no relation to the harm they're designed to compensate for. It becomes just another way for the government to raise taxes without admitting to doing so.

It's not a secret that people pay car fees.

The gas tax was set to charge for road wear, not carbon externialities

And VAT in Europe was only created to rebuild after the war.

Tax repeals are very rare, once they're worked into the budget they are there to stay and usually will expand to pay for other things besides the reason they were originally created.

Hybrids aren't necessarily emitting substantially less.

I was always shocked by the 'good' mpg US hybrids get, compared to Uk/Euro diesels - (though some of the difference is down to different sizes in gallons between us, but still. My 12 year old volvo v70 (not a small car) got 53mpg easily

But are those UK or US gallons? Cars in the UK get 20% more miles per gallon simply because gallons in the UK are 20% bigger.

Prius highway rating of 4.4 L/100 km (53 mpg-US / 64 mpg-imp) Volvo V50 highway rating: 3.8 L/100km - this is the 'extra economical' diesel, with start/stop, aero body and aero wheels, so a good match for the Prius - seems odd that all that extra tech wouldn't give them much improvement? I guess city driving it may be better but I don't have time to dig out the figures now.

If I can save 10 tons of co2 at a cost of 2 dollars and you can save it only at 4 dollars, then if we have to lower the amount by 10 tons with a tax that is evenly distributed the total cost is going to be 3 dollars - 50% more than under a cap and trade system, where I sell you 10 tons worth of co2 credits and implement all the changes.

Since ultimately a carbon limitation is going to mean more expensive products, it is important to limit it as much as possible.

Also I don't see how a cap-and-trade system is going to be more difficult to enforce than a tax, you are still going to have to check if all the companies have paid their taxes.

The 50% in your analysis stems entirely from the fact that you're using ridiculously small integers. At any tax rate greater than $2, the first person would save money by making the change. You say $3, but it could be $2.01. At exactly $2 they would have no preference between enacting the change or not.

Of course, you omitted that the same must be true for cap and trade. The person who can save CO2 at a cost of $2 would have no preference between enacting the change or not if they were only to be paid $2. You'd need to pay them more. Like, $2.01 or $3 if we're only using integers. Exactly like the tax.

> An optimal tax system taxes things and behaviors we don't want

Except for that the goal isn't to punish polluters, it's to get carbon to a level that won't result in the end of human civilization. By moralizing the issue you're just making it more likely that we won't get there.

Of course the goal isn't to punish polluters. It's to convince them to pollute less. This is why tax things and behaviors we don't want - to make it more expensive, so that there's less of it.

> It's to convince them to pollute less.

That's not the goal. What matters is the total amount of pollution, not how much any individual pollutes.

I'm not sure what the distinction you're trying to make is. The total amount of pollution is the sum total of every individual's pollution. In order to reduce the total amount of pollution, individuals have to pollute less (on average). Conversely, if individuals pollute less (on average), then total pollution goes down.

Raising the price of a thing tends to reduce the quantity demanded.

There are perverse cases. Veblen and Giffen goods (higher prices increase consumption). But generally, the relationship holds.

A cap-and-trade or carbon tax system, to work, has to establish how much carbon can be emitted (I'm ignoring for the moment the argument that the answer may well be "none").

A tax or trade mechanism both invoke market mechanisms to allow individual carbon emitters or absorbers to determine how much activity they'll undertake, including seeking alternatives.

If a tax or C&T at a given level isn't sufficient, then the solution is to change the basis level. The result is still (in theory) achieved in the market.

You and ThrustVectoring are arguing two components of the same mechanism.

See also the Jevons Paradox: increasing efficiency (without also increasing prices) increases the amount of a good or resource consumed.

If you want less of something, raise its price. E.g., tax it.

But 'producers' are not the polluters, it's consumers driving cars that are polluting. The goal is not to punish everyone, it's to get them to make other choices.

> it's consumers driving cars that are polluting.

Cars are not the problem, there is no one thing that is the problem. Simply being alive and doing things uses energy, there is no way around that.

And BTW if you do the math a bicyclist (in the US, eating a typical US diet) emits more CO2 per mile than a small car. Assumptions: The bicyclist is riding in addition to any exercise, the riding is not exercise, and the bicyclist eats normal food. A bicyclist who prefers organic, or local, would definitely emit more (both of those emit more CO2 in the growing than regular food).

It's a surprising result, I know. But it's because humans are not very efficient in turning food energy into miles, and cars are reasonably efficient. It doesn't help that growing food takes a lot of energy, especially if you force yourself to only eat local, if you do that energy really goes up.

Source? This study says bicycling is way better than cars: http://bikeportland.org/2011/12/12/new-study-compares-bicycl...

I would be rather wary of bike endorsing studies posted on sites called "bikesomething" just as I would be wary of "rightwingnut.com" publishing studies on immigration or any other contentious issue.

In this case there isn't even a link to rightwingnut.com though.

Just a claim that you need to do math. Parroting climate-denying, anti-intellectual nonsense is worth calling out.

The study EnigmaticLion linked is as bad as you might expect.

They have a chart showing CO2 per calories for different foods which goes from 11 to 1431.

But when they do the final result for a bicycle using some kind of global average food consumption they use the number .144!

Unless I've really messed up my math, the number for a bicycle should be around 200 to 1000 times higher than what they show.

Next they take car emissions, do some "magic math" and change them from 42 g/km to 229g/km.

Using their own numbers, but fixing their math shows a bicycle emitting more than a car.

> Unless I've really messed up my math,

You have.

The chart is in (g per 100 kcal)

>"magic math" and change them from 42 g/km to 229g/km.

42 is for production of the car 229 is for ‘well to wheel' emissions (i.e. exhaust-pipe plus those emitted to produce the petrol).

No "magic" required.

> And BTW if you do the math a bicyclist (in the US, eating a typical US diet) emits more CO2 per mile than a small car. Assumptions: The bicyclist is riding in addition to any exercise, the riding is not exercise, and the bicyclist eats normal food. A bicyclist who prefers organic, or local, would definitely emit more (both of those emit more CO2 in the growing than regular food).

This result is useless since it makes impression that those miles are interchangeable while they are not. No bicyclist will make same amount of miles per unit of time as car driver. Bicyclist will make other choices: living closer to the job, working remotely, etc.

> No bicyclist will make same amount of miles per unit of time as car driver.

Have you never seen urban traffic?

What about CO2 emitted by the driver? They are respiring too.

The real issue with emitted CO2 is not the quantity at the exhaust-pipe versus the quantity exhaled by a cyclist. The CO2 emitted by the cyclist was absorbed by plants in the preceding months. The CO2 emitted by the car was absorbed by plants in a previous era of the earth. The cyclist allows you to leave the oil in the ground keeping the contained carbon out of the atmosphere.

You misunderstand. It's not the CO2 of the plants that are eaten, but the heavy equipment necessary to grow the food, the tractors, and everything else involved in growing food.

That's why produce is so expensive - it takes a LOT of energy to grow it.

Produce is expensive because it's minimally subsidized and it takes a lot of people, land, and care instead of a lot of energy. Dry corn is extremely hardy, fresh lettuce wilts.

At the extreme end, roses are not actually much plant matter, they are expensive in large part because you can't treat them like bricks. On that continuum Produce is closer to flower than grains.

"The cost of administering a cap and trade system to the minor producers would be incredibly expensive - the legislation would instead focus on gouging the five major producers"

Why is that different from the tax approach? Wouldn't taxing the 50,000 minor producers appropriate to their levels of pollution be equally as expensive?

The key part of that is administering part. Cap and trade requires the producer participate in a market for cap allowances. It's that overhead that makes it more expensive.

Ok, yes, I see that there will be some extra expenses in tracking and trading the allowances. I would expect that to be neglible next to the cost of tracking the pollution by all those producers.

No, if they're producing by buying oil or coal. Just tax the source.

I assumed in this scenario that the the producers being taxed are already the ones who extract the oil or coal. If there are 50,000 minor oil producers then taxing all of them will be a bit of a headache.

>Current estimates of the social cost of carbon is ~$220 per ton.

Wikipedia has "from less than $1/tC to over $1,500/tC." It's an inexact science.

cap and trade is a means by which politicians can pick favorites and get around rules that might prevent subsidizing particular businesses.

tax everyone to change behavior is the best route plus it does tend to stop the mini games that go on with trying to transfer funds to contributors and the like