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A better version of this is a source fuels tax, that applies to all carbon-emitting fuels in proportion to the carbon they emit. This would impact flights, driving, and industrial processes in a manner consistent with their environmental impact.

The problem with that is that while it does fall primarily on the rich, as they consume and therefore pollute more, it falls also on the poor and middle class, and as we’ve seen in France, this can be the basis for substantial political opposition, which if nothing else will act against our ability to price the pollution effectively.

The solution for this is to return the source fuels tax funds to the people, such that the tax is revenue neutral. The carbon dividend leaves lower income and less pollutive people better off financially, in addition to everyone being better off environmentally and health-wise, providing a natural basis for the survival of the carbon tax.

This is the approach the Citizen’s Climate Lobby is fighting for: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/ https://energyinnovationact.org/

It has the support of Presidential candidates including Booker and Buttigieg: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/2020-candidates-climate-cha...

Even easier, just reduce the sales tax by the amount of revenue the carbon tax generates.

This seems correct, the average person ends up neutral in terms of tax but they are able to get ahead by choosing less damaging options.

A tax for the sources is a great idea, but you also have to take into account where they are burnt. Flying is especially bad because the emissions are generated high in the atmosphere. The greenhouse effect is worse by a factor two or three compared to ground level emissions.

For how long? Eventually the air should mix?

By googling you probably find better answers than mine, but afaik the problem is that many GHG compounds that decay rapidly at ground level (e.g. NOx) live longer at airplane heights and the clouds that precipitate around exhaust particles also have a warming effect.

What do lower income people do with the carbon dividends? Save? Or spend on more carbon-emissions (like flying)?

Whatever they like. For the most part I would imagine the majority of a carbon dividend would go on making their lives less marginal. Maybe a nicer home near a decent school, better appliances, or clothes. Maybe some savings. Once they have, perhaps they will look to accumulate more emissions like their more wealthy peers.

So long as the nett overall emissions are down and decreasing it matters little. You ensure that by setting the rate of the carbon tax high enough. Perhaps an accumulating rate.

If you tax the fuel there is no incentive to burn them cleanly, only efficiently.

Carrot and stick. Just like today, have CARB and EPA to make sure the fuels are being burned cleanly.

Burning fuel cleanly still emits the exact same amount of carbon.

No, the point is that different chemicals have different impact on the atmosphere (e.g. CO2, CH4 (emitted by cows), NOx (emitted by diesel cars and coal burning), ...)

But I guess you could have outlet filters to try to scrub the exhaust?

I don't know of any technology that can do that and be fitted to a car/airplane.

You could scrub CO2 on the ground to counter the emissions on the plane/car. Fixed plants are certainly more efficient than mobile units.

Why’s that a problem? Use the tax money to offset the CO2, plant trees in subsahara africa and other areas that would benefit.

But before (and after) the trees re-uptake the carbon, the poisonous parts from dirty emissions are still harming people, animals, and other life.

If climate change is truly the harbinger of the apocalypse, and if it needs to be stopped at all costs, then the flight tax would have to be infinite.

On the other hand, if a tree can be planted to capture 1 ton of carbon for 50 cents each, then a flight from NY to Sydney can be offset with $130.[1] That's about $1 per person on a 100-person flight.

Some environmentalists claim that the social cost of carbon is $40 per ton of CO2[2]. That comes out to about $10,500 in taxes for a flight from NY to Sydney. That's basically $100 per person on a 100-person flight, enough to prevent many people from flying.

[1] 53 lbs of CO2 per mile of flight, multiplied by 9,929 miles from NY to Sydney, divided by 2000 lbs/ton, times $0.50 of offset costs per ton

[2] https://www.edf.org/true-cost-carbon-pollution

When a tree dies that CO2 will mostly just be released into the air again. Planting trees is a measure to slow the immediate effects of fossil fuel usage, but not a long term solution. At some point you’ll run out of space for new trees.

It’s like fixing a leaky pipe by adding sponges. Sure, they’ll soak up the water and are cheap, but eventually you will run out of space for new sponges and have to pay for a plumber.

It's more like fixing a leaky pipe by adding a patch that will last for centuries, that can pollinate itself and produce additional patches in the future, and that can be removed and used as a building material for a new house.

"and that can be removed and used as a building material for a new house."

I'm all for building wooden houses. But I can also imagine the amount of work (=> energy consumption) needed to convert theses trees we need to plant to "offset emissions" as new houses.

Transport the workers, feed the machines to chop the trees, the machines to transport the wood, to run the lumber-mill, to transport to the construction site etc. Unfortunately for now we still have: feeding machines => energy consumption => emissions

We can argue that this energy would have been needed anyway to build new houses. However I find it dangerous to couple a carbon reduction strategy to a substantial amount of an activity involving machines (construction). Are we going to need the amount of houses at the scale of the amount of trees we need to plant? In all parts of the world concerned (we don't want to move trees across the world anymore..)?

Unless you have a system in place to take responsibility from seed to logging to long term encapsulation I'll be highly skeptical of that.

What's to say it wont be slashed and burnt to make room for agriculture? What's to say the surplus of timber wont decrease the price and cause less trees to be planted elsewhere?

It's still sponges, not patches. They absorb the water, and you have to manage them. If you don't actively store them, the water will leak out. If you do actively store them and then hand off storage to someone else, the water will leak out when that someone stops paying attention.

The way to sequester carbon with trees is to cut them down when they're grown, and bury them somewhere where there's no air and no one will touch them for thousands of years, or otherwise store them in perpetuity while preventing decay or burning.

Turning them into biochar is a slightly simpler proposal. Biochar is stable for a pretty long time. But of course the process of unburning all the coal we burned so far is not very viable.

It's not an infinitely long term solution but it's a solution that buys us at the very least dozens, if not hundreds of years before we run out of space. Because no solution is ever infinite, given that the Sun isn't, it doesn't make sense to consider something that will potentially work for a hundred years as a non long term solution. By the time that solution stops being long term, we'll have far more advanced options to buy us another century of time.

That's all the CO2 lifecycle is in nature - Oil / Gas are basically large sponges which absorbed Carbon a long time ago, and were buried.

It's not impossible that we could grow a huge number of trees, and bury the resulting wood in a mountain-side to offset burning coal - but the amount of wood we'd need to bury might be prohibitively large.

(We've buried much worse things than wood :) ).

That's basically $100 per person on a 100-person flight, enough to prevent many people from flying.

I don't think there are many trans-Pacific flights with just 100 people on board.

The last flight I took on Singapore Air was around 350 people. So the tax would be about $30 per person. Certainly not enough to prevent people from flying.

Emirates has A380's with 615 people on board. That's just $17 per passenger.

> Certainly not enough to prevent people from flying

That’s fine. The point isn’t the dictate what people do. It’s to offset their negative externalities.

I am under the impression that the problem is excess consumption. Without reducing consumption, i.e. changing what people do, how is it possible to “offset” negative externalities?

Carbon capture is a possible solution.

The issue with offsetting is that it's not actually enough. The idea is basically to help less developed economies grow in a more sustainable way.

But we could delete the entire developing world and still be emitting too much, so capture and/or reduction are necessary, yes.

Why would the tax be infinite? At worst it needs to be equal to the cost of removing enough carbon from the atmosphere to offset the emissions.

Planting trees (and removing the carbon they capture from the carbon cycle, e.g. by turning them into biochar) probably doesn't scale to the amount of carbon we release.

> If climate change is truly the harbinger of the apocalypse, and if it needs to be stopped at all costs, then the flight tax would have to be infinite.

I don't see how that follows. On the assumption that we don't have infinite taxes in general, every $1 raised via a tax on emissions from flying can be put in to offsetting, capture, or research which wouldn't otherwise.

> That's basically $100 per person on a 100-person flight, enough to prevent many people from flying.

It's unclear to me what you mean by this. I think you mean that it would likely reduce demand? Sure, bonus.

> On the assumption that we don't have infinite taxes in general, every $1 raised via a tax on emissions from flying can be put in to offsetting, capture, or research which wouldn't otherwise.

That’s very...optimistic of you. I wish I had the same trust in these systems.

Regardless I highly doubt there will be a global movement to kill air travel any time soon, there’s no world gov to implement this mass tax so it will have to be a few very brave souls who do it while trying to convince everyone it won’t result in a massive brain and money drain which will be multiple x bigger than the tax “return”. Not to mention lost productivity.

Asia and the US (I’m assuming EU would be the first) will suddenly sound like a far better place to live and do business, then there will be a ton of disincentives to follow suit.

Remember when France was going to do their millionaire tax? That didn’t last long once the consequences became apparent and they could be dismissed with campaign slogans.

Countries already apply taxes to flights in or outbound from their territories.

Airlines already apply "fuel surcharges" as part of their ticketing.

Adding a, for example, EU-wide tax on outbound flights based on the distance of origin/destination, would be one way of implementing.

Getting international agreement on, for example, having it apply only to outbound flights, would mean that is not a tax on imports, that could be considered a tariff.

The income could then be spent on subsidizing the other costs of decarbonization.

One of your examples is a recommendation for a solution. The other is a way to profit off of the opportunity.

If climate change is truly the harbinger of the apocalypse,

If you start your argument with an extremified and overly emotional premise, then sure, you can make just about any point you want.

Not all planes have the same greenhouse gas emissions. Instead of a huge tax on flying, tax on greenhouse gas emissions and let the market optimize based on including these economic externalities.

I agree, tax based on emissions.

I think it makes sense for that tax to be progressive, at least initially.

Heating a home for a year depending on climate may produce more emissions than taking a flight. But one is much harder to avoid (particularly if you are in a precarious economic situation).

Even from a purely utilitarian point of view, it would stave off political unrest.

No, just make everyone pay for their carbon. I am carbon negative. I get to fly as much as I want because I always offset. You don't get to add a puppy to your household if you don't offset. That's much fairer than you deciding that my pet hobby is worse than your pet hobby.

Everyone always has these grand market distorting schemes and they inevitably fail at the real goal.

This I agree with because it’s the fairest way to go.

Out of curiosity, how do you offset?

TerraPass! All American so should be locally verifiable etc etc.

What you're essentially saying is, vacationing far from home (more than a days drive, or 500 miles) should only be for the rich or very rich. It's not even a question of poverty, this kind of taxation would take it out of reach of the middle class.

While yes, generally driving generates less carbon than flying, If you have fewer than 3 people in your car however, flying puts out less carbon.

I think there is a good argument for a fixed rate taxation however that makes shorthaul (less than 300 mile) flights wildly unprofitable, thus pushing people into other forms of transportation (ideally train or bus - but probably car)

> What you're essentially saying is, vacationing far from home should only be for the rich or very rich.

If we reduce the number of people doing a thing, then by definition, the rich will be the last ones left doing it, because that's what makes them rich, yes.

> If you have fewer than 3 people in your car however, flying puts out less carbon.

As far as I can tell this isn't the case. It probably depends on whether you're talking about massive American cars or a 100g/CO2 car that's more common in Europe though.

But yeah, people won't make those journeys. It really took off recently (oho) and should just go away again. We don't need Ryanair flights around Europe for student budgets.

Europe is a very different world than the United States, the US is a county in which long distance rail is decidedly non-viable, nor does anyone have enough time to take 3 days to travel 1500 miles (which is how long it takes driving or by train - and even longer by bus) - a change like this would essentially put vacations out of reach of the middle class.

I'll point out, we don't have as many short range flights as Europe does, and no equivalent to Ryan Air here.

Can you quantify "essentially put vacations out of reach of the middle class"?

If flying cost twice as much, then people would, at the limit, be able to fly half as often as they do now.

If they valued their vacation more than other stuff they could just do it anyway, assuming we're talking about the same "middle class" (e.g. not the poor that spend to their max).

But yeah, the whole point is to reduce luxury travel. Jetset vacations are a luxury. We might be able to make them cheap and clean in the future, right now offsetting has a real cost.

Average trip distance in the US is not that much longer than in Europe. It certainly doesn't justify driving a truck instead of a smaller car.

”the US is a county in which long distance rail is decidedly non-viable, nor does anyone have enough time to take 3 days to travel 1500 miles (which is how long it takes driving or by train - and even longer by bus)“

The current shinkansen reaches 200mph, with in-development versions going faster.

Distance from NYC to LA is 2790 miles (by highway; the straight-line distance is shorter). That’s a bit under 14 hours at 200mph.

That’s pretty much the worst case; most people aren’t flying cross-country on a regular basis, and regional flights (e.g. Columbus to Chicago) are a big business.

Obviously real trains would be slower than peak shinkansen speeds, but like most train opponents, you are severely exaggerating your argument.

You can go on vacation in your state too ;-)

In my experience, a lot more Americans who can afford to travel know more people in other regions of the country that they would like to meet than people in most any European country know people in other regions of the continent.

It isn't just about choosing to take a pleasure vacation or not, but seeing close family and friends that often aren't in the same state.

Not as useful when a primary point of the vacation is to get out of a snowbound winterscape and onto a warm beach. Or to visit family who lives in another state.

I think your estimate of the CO2 tax on an individual passenger for a long distance flight as being "out of reach" of the middle class is an overestimate.

In terms of passenger km/l, air flight is very efficient, so spreading the tax proportionally across the passengers would not be a major impost on existing prices.

Isn’t most of the cost of a flight already taxes and duties? I recently booked a 700€ flight from Europe to Latin America, and out of the 700 over 400 were taxes and airport charges.

Airport charges aren't taxes.

Aside from that - sure, there are taxes on flying. Are they enough to offset or capture the carbon emissions (at a rate higher than 100% if we want this to be progressive), and is the money going towards either doing that or researching future methods of how to do that?

> tax it enough that you can offset or capture the emissions a few times over.

Why should we tax any more than required to offset or capture emissions just 1 time over?

Because flying is a luxury activity.

Ideally in the long term everything would be taxed precisely according to its' externalities.

In the short term it makes sense to have a progressive system that more heavily taxes luxuries so that the poor don't get thrown under the bus (read: throw you under the bus).

That's a very moral-imperialist thing to say.

You realise there's probably millions of foreign workers in various countries around the world who move abroad to support their families and flying is the only way for them to see their families.

You're speaking to one.

> Because flying is a luxury activity.

For most people flying is anything but a luxury. Most people are flying in economy for business reasons that they have to do if they want to earn an income.

Business passengers are not the majority, and of those, a huge portion would not happen if the externalities were priced in.

Companies engage in huge amounts of wasteful travel.

> Business passengers are not the majority

Business passengers are the majority of airline profits. Airlines will gladly fly economy class half empty as long as the business class seats are sold out. Hell, some airlines have the business and premium economy cabin taking up over half the plane's available square footage.

Economy class passengers are most negativity affected by the tax, yet this is unlikely to change airline behavior.

Because we haven't already done so.

Unintended consequence: you'll penalize shorter flights because achieving altitude is the least fuel efficient part.

As a result, you'll increase travel via car and the net result will be increased pollution at the expense of the economy.

Driving and flying have approximately the same emissions assuming 1 person in the car.

A bog standard 100g/km car would emit 600kg to go 6000km; a passenger flying London-New York also emits approximately the same. (Obviously you can't drive London-NY, it's an example).

Short haul, as you say, it tips in favour of the car. Multiple people and it becomes a no brainer.

Then take into account the fact that tons of journeys would simply not happen. It's common for people to jet around Europe for weekend trips. No-one would drive that.

I have a sense that US domestic flights tend to skew discussion on this.

If the emissions costs are constant in terms of $/ton of CO2, the incentive would only exist if the car route is less polluting.

Progressive taxation is generally a thing we accept. I'm happy to pay more tax than my friends who don't earn as much too.

Really? I'm livid I pay much more tax than those with a net worth much higher than mine. Real estate has all the tax benefits in my country, while gainful employment is punished.

Right, so you want it to be _more_ progressive, rather than the current imperfect state.

It's broken in the UK as well. Capital gains taxes are tiny as compared to income. :P

If it were up to me we'd derive all our tax from things that actually effect the commons: land usage, water usage, pollution, waste.

Taxing income or capital gains in the first place was a mistake.

Unfortunately the reality is this leads to a regressive tax structure, as history has shown. Intelligent people can accumulate wealth many orders of magnitude faster than the “unwashed masses.”

I’m actually surprised by this since I assumed 99% of people are ok with progressive taxation. I believe the real argument lies in how progressive it is, as the extreme limit leads to the wealthy paying 99% of the taxes. I think currently the 1% pay 50% of the taxes in the US so the sliding scale it more towards progressivism anyways. You could argue how much more you can squeeze vs. the repercussions of such.