Isn't it amazing how all solutions to all these problems require an intellectual elite preaching to people about how to live their lives.
Climate change is driven by carbon/greenhouse emissions, which are generated by productivity/industry, which is created by our economic paradigm namely capitalism.
Capitalism is great imo, except when its unconstrained - it then becomes cancerous and a positive feedback loop. Feedback loops are exponential by their implicit mathematical nature. Either this loop is going to go vertical and explode, or we temper the exponentiation rate to buy more time.
A carbon tax will temper the growth rate by treating emissions as a cost and not a willie nillie economic “externality”. But this will make a country uncompetitive in the short term - which makes it politically tenuous and even unviable to those who can only think in the short term. It would likely need to be paired with incentives for other industries and trade agreements/sanctions to force other nations to cooperate.
So all this to say our solutions are become tree hugging hippies, techno optimism (new efficient technology will save us!), or capital controls (carbon tax, etc). I don’t know about everyone else, but the first one is a pipe dream, the second is an existential gamble, and the third one actually seems manageable.
I hope everyone once visits the 3 countries listed and visits the cities with the most industries or even the rivers where the waste from leather tanneries get dumped. Carbon is the last thing they care about.
> No one knows how high a carbon tariff would be but it seems likely it would be imposed at the rate of our own federal carbon tax. A back-of-the-envelope approximation using the example of imports of Chinese and Indian steel shows that the impact would be significant. In 2019, Canada imported 612,000 metric tons of steel from India and China. The emissions associated with those imports are around 1,132,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide, using McKinsey’s estimate of 1.85 tons of carbon dioxide per metric ton of steel produced.
> Chinese and Indian steel presumably wouldn’t have to pay the full weight of the carbon tax on every ton of CO2, because we exempt 80-90 per cent of emissions from our domestic industry, and, to be non-discriminatory, the adjustment rate would have to match how we treat domestic producers. That said, even with an exemption rate of 85 per cent a carbon tariff would be costly. At that rate, 169,830 tons of CO2 related to these imports would be subject to the tax, which is currently $40/ton. That gives a cost of more than $6.7 million. At the 2030 rate of $170/ton, it balloons to more than $28.8 million. Apply this technique across a long list of other products from these and other high-emitters and the costs become substantial.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-carbon-tariffs-are...
>we have a problem with giant cities where you cannot even see the sky anymore...
Our problem is, that we externalize cost to much. Moral people take care of their waste/byproducts and side effects -- unless they can't see it. Like invisible CO2, overseas exploitation or paramounting debt. We have build our society and lifeforms on top of these externalities and some day will be pay day, so it is reasonable to either limit consumption or pay for sustainable disposal now. Compact cities reduce metabolic cost of our processes and you can't really bring the luxury argument while looking at the current over all decline.
My country has introduced a carbon tax to control consumer behavior. We already have the highest energy prices and have problems with skyrocketing prices for property. Our finance minister is probably delighted and my state will start to save nature tomorrow.
This is senseless activism. There won't be a change in consumer behavior, because people already try to minimize energy usage obviously.
Our energy tax already covers that. To connect that to CO2 emissions has some advantages, but also some disadvantage, because there a lot of other factors that threaten the environment. What is clear that it won't have an effect on consumption.
You can do that for all I care. I can live with increased property prices. But don't complain about lacking equity or equality afterwards. You wanted that yourself.
Noise and stress levels are also higher living in a city. This might be interesting for a religious ascetic and city planners invested in property prices or people jealous of people living where they want to.
Shifting the tax burden to coal plants in the form of CO2 taxes would result in a much lower electricity price and would allow the abolishment of the EEG surcharge. Not to mention all the GDP growth that you get for free by increasing the domestic investment rate.
The EEG is bad, I agree. Photovoltaics are perhaps helpful, but they should be placed in a region > 1000 sun hours. Otherwise their eco-budget isn't that good. I think this is why the EEG doesn't include them anymore.
We pay ~30c/kwh. The power itself is at about 4c. Infrastructure and taxes are the largest cost factors here. A tax won't change anything for the better. Things are like they are.
With more gas we might get a better CO2 budget, but that again takes time. Coal is bad but it is also demonized. South Korea has nuclear power, thermal energy and exports liquified gas. They still have a worse CO2 budget per capita. Coal is a problem and you can panic because of climate change, but it is not the decisive factor.