This is why taxing carbon is better policy than patchwork regulations.
I don't think so. We are way past the economic incentives or the market efficiency theories.
Carbon emissions have to stop to save what can be, period.
That means outlawing.
See what's happening in France and Belgium at the moment with the "yellow jackets", a peek into the shape of things to come.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/16/gilet-jaunes-y... and https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/24/french-gilets-...
Further, our whole systemis dependent on carbon. Millions (billions?) would starve without it, along with other downsides.
Future impacts will be worse if we don't stop, but tell that to people suffering today.
The advantage of a carbon tax approach is that it uses market incentives to encourage investments in alternatives. Hopefully, we are able to discover viable alternatives via this method, otherwise we're done for either way.
A command and control shutdown simply seems impossible. Maybe carbon taxes are too, but I feel a tax and dividend approach could work, as everyone gets money from it. Or a proposal to tax carbon and massively cut income taxes.
The yellow jacket protests you cite:
1. Didn't have any return of money to taxpayers. It was just a tax hike.
2. Would be even worse if fuel were banned
I do not entirely disagree with the principle that a hard tax carbon could alleviate the symptoms. But...
No matter the solution, it's just too late for humanity to implement it globally.
To be clear, I do think specific bans like a non-electric vehicle ban can be good policy. But they're not the same as "outlawing carbon".
Overall, global, carbon use it up, and the reason is that individuals find it profitable, at the margins, to use more of it.
The other popular large-scale technology-neutral suggestion, cap-and-trade, suffers from much of the same problems. E.g. the EU ETS is mostly a bureaucratic boondoggle that achieves nothing (the price is so low it doesn't have much, if any, effect).
So what then? Well, performance standards may not be as neutral as a carbon tax/cap-and-trade, but they seem politically much more palatable: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/11/16/180963...
According to a quick Google search, https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/sc..., China is the highest emitter, followed by the US, which emits half as much CO2, and India emits half again as much as the US.
Hypothetically provinces/countries could be taxed relative to their emissions (albeit this would take some fantasy-like widely agreed upon criteria).
It would have negative economic consequences in the short term, I'm sure. But put in place by large importers it would directly motivate emission offenders to not play the game of lowest-common-denominator.
That doesn't make sense.
Not all countries need to do it. Just most.
In in actual fact, the sooner leader countries like the USA do it the sooner other countries get their act together.
Don't act like this is all or nothing. It's not.
Furthermore, the sooner the USA does it the sooner technologies improve, the sooner other smaller countries are suddenly enabled by said technologies.
That aside whole "we all need to do it" is utter nonsense. No, you don't. Other countries taking advantage of you is still not a socially moral excuse. Mind yourself first thanks.
You think the "brainstorming sessions" accomplished nothing because of cherry picked single year data on Imgur?
Yikes.
One useful rhetorical side effect is breaking the narrative linking GDP with petrol consumption. Opening people's mind's to the possibility that conservation and switching to renewable won't crater the economy.
Perceptions matter.
You better believe the global community will slam the USA for their emissions.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/01/climate/us-bi...
Other countries have their issues and NOBODY is defending them here. So I'm not sure what you're getting at with the rest of that statement.
How do you know of Chieng-Shen's widgets are from polluting factories but Hong Wan's aren't?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
Agree, but that doesn't make the tax a free market solution. A free market solution would be a solution from the market, not a government imposed tax.
Then we can avoid disagreement over the definition of "free market solution"
You seem to be the only one in this thread with the clarity of thought to see the obvious.
So if we remove those completely, take away rule of law, abolish property rights and all of that.
Would there then exist a market to speak of at all? Would it be “free”?
I'm not claiming government intervention isn't good; I'm simply arguing you can't call it a free market solution, because it isn't. Taxes are not free market solutions.
I actually favor quotas and bans to deal with carbon dioxide emissions.
One asks to what degree do we not know the costs? And these costs aren't ketchup economic prices but actual primary environmental effects. You can't buy your way out of those by having the central bank provide more liquidity.
> A market solution would be based upon true supply and demand and agreement on price in buy / sell transactions.
This is worse because the market not only has no way to price these cost but it is _blind_ to them. That you don't realize this means you think 'free markets' are 'magical'
> A tax representing the "externality" is just a politically made-up number. So it's sort of free market but not really.
FTI: Your free markets don't exist without politics.
Not the guy you're replying to, but you're wrong. This isn't a debate about effectiveness, it's about whether the tax is a free market solution or not. No one is arguing that the market isn't blind to it; this very well could be a case of a market failure and a tax may very well be the correct solution, it is not however a free market solution. A tax is government interference in the market and is by definition not a free market solution.
No, it isn't. Taxes are not free market solutions. End of story. Taxes are government interference in the market; this isn't debatable, it's just a fact.
A failure mode of environmentalism is attaching it to random other progressive ideas. "Let's have a carbon tax and use it to fund universal healthcare!" I want a carbon tax, and I want universal healthcare, AND I want them to be completely disjoint. I will argue for each independently on their merits.
Otherwise both magnify each others' vulnerabilities. For example, say universal health care is funded through a carbon tax, and this tax works really well and emissions plummet. Now universal health care suffers? What a stupid outcome!
Robust government programs are independent with separate funding (see Social Security). Make a big carbon tax, have it fund an equally big carbon dividend, and run it independently from everything else on the progressive or conservative wish list.
This cuts the other way too. No, a carbon tax should not fund conservative pet projects like eliminating capital gains. That has to live or die on its own merits, not tied to environmentalism. The carbon tax must be its own thing to endure.
Here it’s mostly seen when people argue that road taxes (VED) and fuel taxes should be spent on roads.
I’m with Churchill on the one: “Entertainments may be taxed; public houses may be taxed; racehorses may be taxed…and the yield devoted to the general revenue. But motorists are to be privileged for all time to have the whole yield of the tax on motors devoted to roads. Obviously this is all nonsense…Such contentions are absurd, and constitute…an outrage upon the sovereignty of Parliament and upon common sense.”
Countries that have to pay for healthcare have a strong incentive to keep its population healthy to reduce healthcare costs. The U.S. doesn't because it doesn't pay for it directly - it's the citizens themselves that have to pay for it.
Ultimately, the U.S. economy is still negatively impacted by an unhealthy population/workers, but since it's not a direct impact for which the government has to pay out of its tax funds, it doesn't care nearly as much about that impact.
It doesn't work that way in practice. It's a weird argument and nobody would ever buy it as there is no obvious cognitive (and politically valid) path from climate change policy to healthcare policy. This is true for America, and Canada and Australia and I suspect every other country.
Also, your underlying assumption, that the American government either has no incentive or is uncaring with respect to keeping the American public health, is just wrong and probably betrays your ideology. Both parties, Dems and GOP, care about people.
About 20% of Americans have Medicaid, and about 20% have Medicare. There is some, but not much, overlap, so the total percentage doesn’t hit 40%. Health care needs to be better in the US, but it’s misleading to suggest that huge amounts (trillions of dollars) of government money aren’t already being spent on it.
Taxes to discourage undesirable behavior.
Investments to encourage desired behavior, outcomes.
Regulation to ensure markets are fair, safe, competitive.
They're just tools. Why all the fuss?
Why do people keep arguing about the tools? eg "Taxes are theft!"
Is it because some don't want to argue about the policy?
Murder laws aren’t rendered useless by unsolved murders. A carbon tax makes sense even if only large-scale domestic production is initially covered.
Currently there's an effective subsidy on air polluters; I can sue my neighbor who dumps waste on my land, but I can't sue the people dumping carbon in my lungs. Is that subsidy not concerning?
What if we can learn how to control climate and have ice free arctic, green sahara and 21st century standard of living?
While we need a way to penalize air polution (not just co2!), implementing that simply as 'extra money that government can spend on war' is not ideal.
People who start off by making an "I'm taxed too much" argument might do this for their own children, but the whole point is that they're not willing to spend a single dollar to save someone else's children.
So you both lose your money today and you don't do your children future any better.
Taxation is the wrong answer, taxation works to resolve at most the issues of today, never the issues of tomorrow
As of today the best one can do is ethical spending and information campaigns and hope enough people vote with their wallet for sustainable companies.
Let's agree that a carbon tax should be revenue neutral (via a dividend), and not fund either a progressive or conservative agenda. The purpose of the tax is to internalize CO2 externalities. Other issues can be hashed out on their merits.