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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

You dump carbon emissions into the air; nobody charges you (editing for clarity - I'm talking about breathing).

It also isn't at all obvious that any given company is doing more damage with the stuff they dump into the air than the positive benefits they create by burning fossil fuels, which is why there isn't more support for charging for carbon emissions.

China is in a much better position to deal with the impacts of climate change after being responsible for ~25% of last years emissions than it would be if it had tried to industrialise using solar panels.

Fossil fuels have positive and negative externalities. Just taxing the negatives and ignoring the positives is not a rational approach.

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Power generation has enormous positive outputs: the power. But that's not an externality. Unless they start dumping all their output into a tesla tower so that everyone can get power for free, there is nothing to give them public money for. Their only externalities are negative, and they should only be paying the public.

What, tax the positives, too?

The positives take care of themselves. The negatives are what need corrective action.

Externalities don't take care of themselves. That is why they are classed as externalities.

Logically speaking it would be subsidise the positives, but practically it is easiest to just let the negative externalities run and enjoy the positives, if the positives outweigh the negatives.

> You dump carbon emissions into the air; nobody charges you (editing for clarity - I'm talking about breathing).

And from your vehicle(s), and from your yard equipment, and from your fireplace, and probably from your heating system, and maybe from your kitchen, and maybe from your clothes dryer, and so on. And don't even get me started on things like outdoor grills, which could be considered major polluters (along with fireplaces and such). Heaven help us if the EPA ever decides to crack down on this stuff, especially enforcing PM 2.5 restrictions, because this could potentially have a major impact on us at home.

A carbon tax on gasoline would be smaller than existing taxes. Wood's carbon neutral. A slight increase in the price of natural gas and propane would not have a very big impact.

No comment on PM 2.5 restrictions, entirely different topic.

A carbon tax on gasoline is pretty much a non-starter, because gasoline prices have been much higher in the past than they are now but that didn't have much impact on demand, if reducing demand is your goal. (Otherwise it's just a money grab.) You would probably have to increase gasoline prices by a factor of maybe 3x or 4x or more in order to have any real impact.

Gasoline prices are headed down to below $2 a gallon in some parts of the country right now, but from what I understand California prices are going to stay at least twice that, and might even go higher. So we'll have to see what effect that has on demand there, if any.

> No comment on PM 2.5 restrictions, entirely different topic.

Carbon emissions are carbon emissions; it's not just all about CO2. PM 2.5 carbon particles and visible soot and such will likely eventually oxidize to CO2 anyway, though. And a lot of it oxidizes almost as soon as it's emitted, given its high temperature and its exposure to fresh supply of oxygen.

> Otherwise it's just a money grab.

It would make some difference in use, in the medium to long term. It would make sure nobody moves from other carbon emission sources to gasoline to save money. And most importantly, you could use 50 cents a gallon to capture a lot of carbon.

> eventually oxidize to CO2

Let me rephrase then. Those particles, treated purely as a carbon source, are pretty negligible. Any restrictions that matter would be based on non-CO2 effects.

Our real problem with the use of gasoline isn't really how much of it we use but rather how we use it so inefficiently, which of course leads to more usage and related pollution than necessary. IIRC, gasoline vehicles are only 20% or so efficient, while diesel vehicles are a bit better. And contrary to what you say, if we move more towards electric vehicles in a big way then I could foresee a day when we instead burn gasoline or some other fossil fuel equivalent in a more centralized and much more efficient manner, much like we do with natural gas today, and then use the electricity generated by that to power cars.

As to the PM 2.5 thing, like I said a lot of that gets oxidized to CO2 anyway, which adds up over time. Lately the EPA has been making a lot of noises about regulating this stuff, except that it turns out that much of it comes from places like our own kitchens. And nobody really wants the EPA involved with that part of it, hence the efforts to reign them in somewhat. But of course any talk of potentially restraining the EPA here is personified as "evil" in the press.

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