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Comment by 74B5 | Hacker News Reader

>This is probably to influence housing prices

>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.

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People living in the countryside have in most cases a far more sustainable way of living. Of course that doesn't scale infinitely, but that is a whole other problem.

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.

If you are talking about Germany then no. Germany is maximizing CO2 emissions by delaying the shutdown of coal plants. If anything, energy prices are high because coal plants force renewables off the grid and the EEG is anti efficient in the sense that it makes cheap electricity very expensive.

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.

We use coal for base loads. Our renewables are basically 3 positions: Wind, Sun, Biogas. We aren't there yet and there are other factors that need to be regarded. It just coverse ~42% of energy consumption right now, which is a good start.

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.

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