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Comment by notatoad | Hacker News Reader

I believe carbon pricing has two aspects - one is to charge carbon emitters, the other aspect is to use that money to do something that reduces existing CO2 levels. Just charging emitters does not completely solve the problem, so research into the best ways to spend the funds generated by carbon pricing is critical.

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Charging emitters absolutely solves the problem by itself!

You just have to charge enough to get emissions down to the desired level.

It depends. You could, for example, make high carbon taxes while reducing income taxes or dividending the money back to people. This would let you have more of a carbon blocking effect while keeping government revenues steady.

If you use the money for a specific purpose, then you either need low carbon taxes to avoid radically altering the government’s role in the economy, or you are making a large bet that the government will spend the money well.

Having a large, long run carbon tax will do much to encourage the market to develop alternatives.

I imagine you include deductions, like most tax systems, with actions like planting trees being counted against your emissions. For many businesses that would be a more effective way to spend, and likely more efficient than the government middle man doing the work

Better to start now with some rough combination of redistribution to help the most vulnerable (in society, and to climate impacts), the poorest etc, and also projects to manage and reduce - forestry planting, clean energy, insulating houses not at risk of floods etc.

Then once it's in and working start researching better and more effective ways to use it. I don't think we have the luxury to hang around any more.

I always thought that carbon/green certificates taxes go towards environment/renewable energy, but I'm probably too naive...

How to minimize the Tragedy of the commons effect? Where countries don't want to impact their economic growth because other countries won't impose such taxes, therefore some production will move there.

>How to minimize the Tragedy of the commons effect? Where countries don't want to impact their economic growth because other countries won't impose such taxes, therefore some production will move there.

This was the point of the Paris Agreement.

The Paris agreement did nothing about this. It is completely non binding. The actual emissions reduction plans (INDCs) were drafted by each country and not negotiated.

Good question. The answer lies in multilateral agreements (Paris etc.) and in so-called Border Carbon Adjustments. The latter have to be implemented carefully so as not to violate any WTO rules [0], but it's possible.

[0] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TPC_201...

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