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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

The climate doesn’t care about economics, only total parts per million of atmospheric CO2. It is mind boggling it’s taken us this long to appreciate the gravity of the situation and new combustion vehicle bans are kicking in.

I’m sure even when crop failures and mass migrations happen, some will still complain about their rights to burn fossil fuels for energy. We pulled progress and growth forward through incurring an enormous energy debt (burning ancient sunlight for 100+ years), and now it’s time to pay it back.

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> The climate doesn’t care about economics, only total parts per million of atmospheric CO2.

But behavior cares about economics, taxes change the economics, and behavior affects CO2 levels.

The devil is in the details, of course. Taxes would have to be high enough to get the behavior under control. It could turn out that, in order to get usage down low enough, the taxes need to be 500% of the cost of a fossil fuel car or 5000% of the cost of fuel. And maybe that's not politically feasible or something.

But my point is in order to dismiss the idea of taxes as a solution, you can't start with the idea that taxes won't have any effect. Governments all over the world use taxes to change behavior, and there are obvious examples of it working, like tariffs in trade wars.

Note that I'm also not saying taxes are the right solution here. This is really just a point of order.

I agree that economics can be used to incentivize certain behavior, my argument (poorly) worded is that such a policy (taxes vs outright bans) is no longer sufficient. Better economic incentives (carbon tax) might have negated the need for a ban, but we're beyond that point now [1].

[1] https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...

A carbon tax is still pretty important. If you can only push through one of the two politically it's not clear to me an ICE ban is the right choice.

In ten years at the current rate of progress, EVs will be well past their tipping point economically and sales will crater anyway. If you add substantial carbon tax on the fuel, they're done.

And a carbon tax will help with all sorts of other emissions, transportation being only about 10%.

A new car sales ban does help car companies see the writing on the wall, but in the EU the direction is crystal clear anyway.

I feel like pointing at a graph of carbon in the atmosphere is an unfair response to the parent comment, who isn't denying the problem and is just talking tactics.

Well I took the time to reply toomuchtodo, so I'm just going to paste my response here.

It appears politically untenable in the US. But so does a new ICE ban.

Caifornia has passed a 2035 ban, but it has flirted with a carbon tax too in parts.

Canada has a carbon tax, and a 2040 ban. Australia had a carbon tax, with no ICE ban, but to our eternal shame repealed it when a conservative government regained power. India has an ICE ban scheduled and a carbon tax. Norway has their aggressive 2025 ban, but has had a carbon tax that covers about half their emissions since the 90s.

The EU doesn't have one yet, but I would bet a lot of money they will by 2030.

It's not clear to me that they're all that different in terms of political will required. The same countries are interested in both.

Although the specific level of tax that can be passed on carbon may not be sufficient for the desired result. An ICE ban is in theory blanket, although exceptions are going to creep in.

Right, but we also recognize that eventually the impact of something is so small that it's not worth banning. Why are Lamborghinis allowed to be sold despite emissions easily going into hundreds of grams of CO2/km? Because legislators have correctly recognized that the number of Lamborghinis sold each year, and the average amount of miles they are usually driven is absolutely negligable and has close to no impact on climate change. That's why small car manufacturers who produce few thousand cars a year have an exemption from the new emissions regulations enforced by the EU from next year - they just don't matter at all.

Once the market gets to a point where the sales of ICE cars are around few percent out of all, maybe even less - then there's no point in banning them at all. Clearly only people who absolutely need them are buying them, because no one else does. So....why ban them? And it looks like the market is absolutely heading towards that point anyway, with truly draconian fines in the EU introduced soon and general apetite for electric cars showing strong growth in the car sales. We'll be there in 10 years, full ban or not.

I see what you’re trying to get at, but look at Toyota (who sells about 10.7 million cars a year annually) trying to push fuel cells when EVs are the clear winner and there is almost zero hydrogen fueling infra (Honda and Fiat have to pay Tesla billions because they aren’t selling EVs in Europe, but still get to sell those combustion vehicles they do sell). I think market forces are important, but sometimes, when the situation warrants it (global emergency), you have to use the regulatory stick. We’ve run out of time for the Imaginary Hand to save us.

During World War 2, the US gov didn’t go to manufactures and kindly ask them to retool for the war effort. They demanded it. Similar situation, similar (but not quite as draconian) implementation. “You will build only EVs now, retool accordingly”.

Governments are even willing to invest in manufacturing and charging network costs, and green/central banks are coming with easy money. I’m unsure what other support you can provide at this point to make the transition smoother, considering petroleum consumption externalities are already unpaid for by the entire supply chain.

One way or the other, politics needs to send signals to the manufacturers and customers, where things are going. Yes, I expect the ban to be completely a token effort because people stopped buying ICE cars long before, but that might be triggered by this token now. Also, when discussing large scale infrastructure needed, be it grid enhancement or charge point creation, having this clear goal helps with the planning, especially when the government is involved.

The climate doesn't care also for political choices based on nothing else than PR

EV are cool, they make people who supports them blindly look cool too

Banning fast fashion is not, it'll make anyone who proposed it sound like a sad trombone or a "boomer" who wants to stop youth expression of inner self

But I know which is worse and I know that if we ban the first, we should obviously ban the other 5 years before

p.s. I do not own a car anymore (sold the last one 7 years ago) and I only make an average of less than 1 thousand Kms/year - this year I still have to surpass the 500 Kms - on rented cars (mainly inside the city, on electric cars)

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