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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

No sacrifice should be required. Let's suppose that we adopt a carbon tax with dividend, along with a carbon tariff.

Estimates for the externalities caused by carbon emissions vary widely, but a median estimate is around $100 / metric tonne, so we'll pick that. Gas prices double. Beef, cement and the usual suspects go up in price substantially, although likely gas is the only thing that doubles. Every family gets a cheque in the mail every month for a few hundred dollars (the dividend).

The carbon tariff means that imports from non-cooperating nations go up in price substantially, but imports from nations that have their own carbon taxes or equivalent are not impacted.

What dramatic sacrifices have you made? Normal families will be able to pay their share of the carbon tax with the dividend.

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Carbon $100/ton tax+ariff would be incredibly great but,...

Carbon tax would not be Pareto optimal. nobody is claiming it is are as far as I know and there is no reason to assume it is. Some people would lose big.

Large scale disruptions and frictions when economy adapts. Value of various investments will sink when taxation changes. People lose their jobs, some can't find new jobs with similar wage or with less wages. Even house prices will drop outside accessible public transport. Demand for electric cars would increase their price. For example tourism would suffer dramatically when people stop flying.

People in poor countries would suffer the most because their economies are very CO2 intensive.

I claim that carbon tax is closer to pareto optimal then no carbon tax, since without a carbon tax the externalities are not accounted for.

Sure there would be losers, but there would also be winners. You claimed "reduce living standards for a generation with several percentages", I claim there would be a balance between losers & winners and the economic impact would be minimal.

The dividend goes a long way to ensuring that the losers are concentrated among the rich and the average poor person benefits.

You can look at the issue however you want, but at the end of the day somebody is going to have to pay for the renewable energy and carbon sequestration tech.

We can fund them with taxpayer money, which means the average Joe pays, and politicians pick winning (or losing) technologies.

Or we can make the polluters fund them, and let the invisible hand pick the best technologies.

I find the second option much more attractive. And Nobel-prize winning economists agree: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/business/economic-science...

I repeatedly agree that carbon tax+tariff would be incredibly great. Somehow the point of what I'm saying is not getting trough and people assume that I argue against tariffs.

In a polarized world looking both good and bad sides of generally good thing is seen as being against.

My point is that if we want to make a real change, we can't realistically expect to fix all negative side effects that even the best solution has. If the overall solution becomes politically possible, we must hammer it trough even if we must throw many good people under the bus.

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