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Comment by deusofnull | Hacker News Reader

I think anything like that is going to appear retroactively very hypocritical to any developing nation that finds itself under such carbon tariffs.

A sort of reparation or settlement for western carbon output in the 20th century, which the same impact on the climate only differing in happening earlier, would help developing nations get on board. This arrangement could take the form of investment in a developing nations clean energy infrastructure or compensation in other forms.

Otherwise, developing nations besides China will probably continue buying legacy, retired coal fire equipment from China, which has been happening for some time now.

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Hypocrisy is orthogonal to effectiveness. If it costs less to switch to renewables than pay the tariffs then they stop burning coal.

But the hypocrisy argument fails anyway because the renewable alternatives that exist today didn't exist a hundred years ago. It's altogether different to choose coal when the science is less well understood and no viable alternatives are known to exist than to do so today when that is not the case.

There is also a difference in scale. There are more than four times as many people in the developing world as there are in the developed world. If they used the same amount per capita then they would release more carbon in 10 years than we did in 40. Even if the First World hadn't burned an ounce of coal, they still wouldn't be able to do what we actually did. But they also don't need to today.

And it would be easier to pass tariffs than convince the population of the First World to send their money overseas. This needs to happen right now, not after people argue about it for another twenty years.

Largely, I agree with you. Just pointing out the appearance of hypocrisy could lead to tension in this decisive time where we need to act now, as you say. A mixture of tariffs / investment could be used to get the goal most effectively.

Imposing the tariffs would result in the investment you're looking for anyway. Once you make coal uncompetitive on cost, people still need electricity, so they buy renewables. The investors follow the demand.

At some point pollution will be seen as an act of war and then I suspect the problem will be solved by banking sanctions on countries that buy old, inefficient equipment.

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