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Comment by privateSFacct | Hacker News Reader

It only has to do it cheaply now because there is NO COST to putting CO2 into the air.

Why are people surprised that if something is free (pumping CO2 into air) demand for it is high?

You are telling me that doing a charge of let's say $10 - $100/ton of CO2 wouldn't have a DRAMATIC impact on emissions? Is $10 - $100/ton too little for a supposed climate emergency?

There is so much funding and lawmaking and finger pointing and shaming - but still - dumping CO2 into the atmosphere if free and dumping remains high and people pretend to be surprised.

On energy: CA curtails (turns off) solar (and wind) power because there is not enough demand. In 2019 CA had 921,000 MWhs of curtailment.

Let's start by charging something for CO2 emissions.

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You mean a Carbon Tax ?

The tax that applies to every single business, every single product, every single process, everything. The one that causes every single vested interest to come out of the woodwork and join together to make it politically toxic.

We tried this in Australia. It has killed every government that even dared to discuss it. And politically it is utterly impossible to defend e.g. "Carbon tax that raises power prices for pensioners".

Except many countries have carbon tax

Which ones would that be? I know of many which have a tax on various forms of energy consumption. And even then, industrial consumers are exempt or have a reduced rate.

Heres a document explaining things from 2017 issues by the Japanese government. I remember reading it a few days ago, interesting for the context: http://www.env.go.jp/en/policy/tax/20170130_greening.pdf

IMHO, the first step is to migrate coal power plants to capture and storage. It is much easier to drop emissions than to pull from the air. I would like to see more tax pressure globally incentivizing carbon release reductions. Instead you get weird stuff like Japan's carbon tax where coal pays the lowest carbon tax of gasoline and diesel.

Not all polluters are equal, some make huge gains while doing it.

Why not have the level of sales tax (VAT in the UK) vary depending on amount of C02 was used to create a product. The consumer would not pay any more on average.

... "will be used to offset costs for pensioners."

Our carbon tax worked at reducing emissions, and at being low economic impact. It was removed because we are a corrupt banana republic, not because it's unworkable.

don't call it tax, call it carbon dividend and give the collected money away to citizens.

This is the secret. The average citizen would actually come out ahead financially, making it a progressive tax, as opposed to the de-facto regressive taxes that have received popular opposition in other attempts.

"The Largest Public Statement of Economists in History": https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/

> The average citizen would actually come out ahead financially

For a while. But if the carbon tax works and society switches to clean energy, then there is no more emissions and no more dividends pay to the citizens.

Goal achieved.

I suspect there will be always be use cases for fossil fuels; for instance, even when 99% of all cars are electric, I wouldn't want to deny auto enthusiasts muscle cars and the like, if they're willing to pay for the societal externality. The carbon tax can continue to go up to cover these cases.

Moreover, I think the same model can apply to other negative externalities (aka, Pigovian Tax [0]). But to the extent that the public will someday complain that their carbon dividend is going down: (a) I call that a good problem to have, and (b) because the collective action problem now points the other direction, there's no individual incentive to over-consume such that the dividend goes up again.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax

Squint a bit and Canada's carbon dividend looks like UBI.

Two birds, one stone.

This has been the Canadian model and the Right has still weaponized the worst kind of vitriol against it (despite a carbon tax being the most market friendly mechanism).

Opponents of carbon tax and similar measures need to decide which they like less... some lost profits, an escalating carbon tax, and reshuffling their investment portfolios -- or food riots, mass migration, the massive resurgence of left wing populism, and even civil war, once the effects of climate change become intense and obvious to the populace.

Canada is likely to be spared the worst effects of climate change due to geography so it might not seem like such a serious problem to them. Even under the worst case scenario, Canada will still be self sufficient in staple crops. And any mass migrations will have to pass through the USA first.

People living through massive record forest fires in B.C. and Alberta probably won't agree with you.

Not to mention the water supply of Calgary and many other western Canadian cities is glacier fed, and the Bow Glacier that provides to Calgary may not be able to meet demand within the next 30 years... a problem that will only get worse with climate change.

Yes, the great lakes region looks better than most. And it will look desirable to a lot of displaced people...

Carbon tax is not harder to implement than VAT. It's also the most effective tool against CO2 release.

Yes, people don't want any solution that would result in the slightest inconvenience in the present. So we'll have the end of civilization instead.

We need to think past that point: how will the world look like once civilization has collapsed? What will still exist? What will not?

> It has killed every government that even dared to discuss it. And politically it is utterly impossible to defend

Then pull it out of political discussion! We don't have political discussion about "how to hang people of color Q better" anywhere in the world (mostly) anymore because we've wrote it in the text of our f laws that violence and racial discrimination are forbidden! Not on the political menu anymore.

Same needs to happen with lots of stuff concerning climate, ecology, sustainability etc. - we need to restrict the political menu to only the right choices.

And use the states' monopoly on violence to enforce these choices.

I have some very bad news for you: there are lots of people actively trying to work to bring those back on the menu. It's almost impossible to put things "beyond politics" so long as someone wants to bring them back.

Once some things are off the menu, people need to work really hard to change things. And, more importantly, violence can be used against those people - I mean throw-them-in-prison type of violence, not more. Just like with freedom - in order to preserve it, you need to, "paradoxically", shut some toxic persons' mouths forcefully (eg. "hate speech").

Yeah, sure, you can philosophise in the most general terms but that's not how you get people and companies stop doing wrong things. You get them when the people/entities who want to re-bring the despicable things back into discussion can be fined / closed / put-in-prison etc.

I don't argue for eco-fascism. But with some things we need to be ruthless, especially in order to be able to carry on our peaceful, understanding and democratic discussions concerning all the other things!

Given the extremely uneven distribution of money I suspect that you'd reach "couldn't afford exhaling" levels at one end before making anything resembling a dent at the other. I'm not against a carbon tax, far from it, but it's a difficult problem.

The most direct approach would be to levy the tax at the time buried carbon is taken out of its geological grave, but good luck enforcing that globally. The most realistic approach (still a total sci-fi fantasy, with plenty of room for a dystopian touch) would be a fundamental removal of resource extraction sovereignty, implemented through a combination of military force and buying out whoever is currently in charge of representing that sovereignty.

Good luck convincing China to impose a carbon tax.

Given trade imbalance you could impose carbon tax on Chinese imports.

China has piloted a number of carbon pricing schemes since 2013. It is introducing a nationwide scheme this year. https://www.reuters.com/article/climate-change-china-idUSL3N...

You could but they already planning for a greener future. CO2 is the least of the problems with burning anything (including coal in power plants).

https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-an...

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