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Comment by aoeusnth1 | Hacker News Reader

A carbon tax is the single best possible carbon policy. If implemented well, it

- simultaneously provide the mosts efficient incentives to reduce carbon emissions by shifting the cost onto exactly the people who are offending.

- and provides the funds to compensate the victims of climate change (every human), plus spare change for fundamental research into new Green tech which too unproven to be viable as a startup (would nuclear power ever have been created from scratch by the market?).

It also makes sense to tax SOx, NOx, and other air pollutants for exactly the same reason. However, the time scale and magnitude of those problems are nowhere near as dire.

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I feel as though you may be implying the carbon tax is applied to industry and in policy that's correct, but in practice the carbon tax is passed onto the consumer. Sometimes unashamedly so. I'm not saying it's a bad thing mind you, less consumption is what we need.

Australia trialled this. I say trialled, because our government has been such a flip flop of agendas (and indeed leaders) for nearly a decade and it was only around for 3 years before being repealed. No doubt we'll see it again soon, and I look forward to rehashing the same tired debates, albeit in slightly warmer weather, when that occurs.

Of course it's passed on to the consumer.

Then some company works out how to do the same thing in a less carbon intensive way, and it's cheaper.

That's the whole point. This isn't fixable without pain, no matter how people pretend.

"This isn't fixable without pain..."

Reducing waste (CO2) will boost profits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muda_(Japanese_term)

Industry is asking for a carbon tax. There are few holdouts, for political and personal reasons. Namely, fear and ignorance.

If it did, they would already have.

If short term thinking, externalizing costs and psychopathology would not exist, maybe. But not as is.

I totally agree, and alluded to that in my comment. I just felt like perhaps the comment I replied to was implying that industry bares the cost.

Whether we figure out a less carbon intensive way or just consume less, I think we can agree the benefits are the same.

I have a pet theory that we've reached a kind of "Peak Comfort". While commerce and industry yearns for more revenue, I hope that at some point the average consumer will start to say "Hey, this is probably enough comfort for me, I should focus on other things in my life." Whether that manifests in using less electricity, buying fewer fancy technology bits or sticking with their current car a few more years. Perhaps that is a naive hope, I am not sure.

When the consumer has a choice in products, the costs of each integrates the carbon costs to the environment. When all options have heavy carbon taxes it encourages new product development.

Sounds about right.

You're right, but the dividend portion of the plan linked in the top parent is meant to address the consumer's added cost. Poorer people would see higher benefit since they spend the least on carbon products but the revenue is returned equally.

Also see this paper, which is actually arguing for a slightly different system called cap-and-dividend but with the same outcome in mind: http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/worki...

A plan such as tax-and-dividend or cap-and-dividend also breaches the political divide and shows that both sides can get what they want in a single sensible system. Yes, certain lawmakers will still spitefully resist as they always do.

I think the idea put forth in the Conservatives for Climate Change Action is that instead of the proceeds from the carbon tax accessed on US carbon producers (and indirectly average US consumers/citizens) going to developing countries for unspecified environmental activity (Obama pledge the US would provide $1B to developing countries), the carbon tax proceeds would be pumped back into the US economy via annual $4000 dividend going to average US consumers/citizens.

$1B is pocket change. $1B divided over the US population is about $3 (once? or per year? it doesn't matter).

So... US citizens get a $3997 dividend. Or slightly less, if we want to fund research into say, Thorium reactors, smarter power grids, solar cells, power storage, wind, etc.

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