Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmpman | Hacker News Reader

My neighbor is convinced that climate change isn’t real and has been pushed by the left to make activists feel important. As there’s an economic slant to this, my cynical view is that there’s a chance that climate change agenda is being pushed by AstroTurfing groups to drive government handouts to the Green industry. I’m 99.9% convinced that climate change is happening and will follow the models.... but maybe I’m being scammed.

View on HN

It's very healthy of you to be skeptical of government handouts to the Green industry – not because climate change is fake (it's not), but because government rarely knows how to pick the right tech to invest in. (Note that the government also hands out lots of subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, though.)

The more economically rational way of solving the problem is to implement a carbon fee and dividend [0]. You simply put a tax on fossil fuels as they come out of the ground. This makes everything downstream a bit more expensive. You then return 100% of the tax revenue back to citizens – so government doesn't grow and consumers don't suffer, but companies suddenly feel intense competitive pressure to get more fuel efficient so they can lower prices. The market takes care of the rest.

It makes so much sense, even many of the big corporations are onboard [1].

The best thing you can do today is to contact your local representative about this policy [2].

[0] https://citizensclimatelobby.org/why-we-support-a-price-on-p...

[1] https://www.clcouncil.org/

[2] https://citizensclimatelobby.org/write-your-representative/#...

> You then return 100% of the tax revenue back to citizens – so government doesn't grow and consumers don't suffer

Supposedly HRC almost ran on universal basic income based on a carbon tax, but the math didn't quite work out in 2016.

But regardless of what happens to the money, economic incentives work.

At least the subsidies to fossil fuel companies are designed to spur production, and lower importation - remember the oil embargo? From a macro economic policy, it reduces money leaving the US to pay for oil. Had we not provided the handouts to spur production, would the US have had more money flowing out than the cost of the subsidies? (Global warming aside) The subsidies seem like smart macro economic policy, smart geo political policy, smart military policy. That being said, as long as the US is a net importer of oil, the subsidies make sense. The US is no longer a net importer and the fossil fuel subsidies should be re-evaluated. Notice that if the US were still a net importer of fossil fuels, then the same macro economic policy justifying fossil fuel subsidies could be applied to electric cars (a car is expected to have a service life of 200,000 miles, on average getting 25mpg, requiring 8000 gallons of fuel. Those 8000 gallons required importation of 190 barrels of oil (yes I know you don’t get perfect conversion of crude oil to gasoline - I’m just too lazy to look it up), at $60/barrel = $11,400). Using this logic, a subsidy of <$11,400 per electric car made sense even if the cars were made in Japan or Korea. Each electric car resulted in US not importing $11,400 of oil from a country we were previously extorted by. But now that the US is a net oil producer, the equation isn’t as strong. Yes, an electric car prevents the US from consuming those 190 barrels domestically and provides for greater exports, but we are no longer economically dependent upon the other oil producers. The macro economic policy that should result in lower fossil fuel subsidies should also result in lower electric car subsidies. Of course Hubbert’s Peak does still apply to individual wells (and it will again even after fracking) and the US could slip into a net importer again. Electric cars shelter the US from the shock of a future oil embargoes and subsidies should remain (even above the 200,000 limit per auto manufacturer) until Electric cars are competitive without subsidies (I’m taking Carolla class, not BMW 7-Series).

Now, how does wind and solar have the same geo political benefit? We can always burn coal or build nukes. Subsidies to those industries are dependent upon the assumption of investing to prevent climate change. It doesn’t have an immediate economic benefit to me. As much as I believe in climate change, I expect the worst impact in my lifetime is a higher AC bill. Without children, why would I care?

I think both are true. Climate change is happening, and it’s also being promoted to make money for various green causes.

That’s because he reads different media:

https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/09/20/nolte-clima...

Ding ding ding. That’s exactly what he was quoting. So, how does one counter this?

With more effort than it's probably reasonable to expect, and they probably wouldn't keep listening anyway.

To pick one as I happen to remember it. 500 days before climate chaos. IIRC that was some French minister, or delegate 500 and something days before the Paris 2015 climate summit. It got a fair bit of press, and was making a reasonable point. 500 days to make adequate agreement in the summit or lock in the train to chaos as the plan to reduce won't work. Not that chaos arrives on day 501.

All those Arctic ice free probably miss the second half of the sentence that's "in summer", or in the coming fifty years etc.

If they're going to cherry pick that disingenuously they can "prove" black is white.

Spend a few days reading the scientific reports at ipcc.ch and see if you are still skeptic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com