Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change | Hacker News Reader

Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change

mleverything.substack.com

79 pointsbko143 comments

In Switzerland there was a vote 2 weeks ago about whether we want to support a law to reduce CO2 output by our population. The law was very clear how the money would be spent: improve heating, direct pay to poor citizens, and many others.

Cost:

- 50 cents per gallon of gas (our gas is about 6$ per gallon)

- 20$ to 100$ for a plane ticket

The law was refused by 51% of Swiss citizen.

What really killed me was that the youngest part of the population, the ones who will be the most impacted by the climate crisis, voted the strongest against it. Switzerland being one of the richest countries, I cannot understand how an increase of 10% on luxury items (plane tickets) can have this impact.

Funny story: now that the law has been refused, the oil companies announced a 15% increase of the gas price... Nobody is protesting so far.

> What really killed me was that the youngest part of the population, the ones who will be the most impacted by the climate crisis, voted the strongest against it. Switzerland being one of the richest countries, I cannot understand how an increase of 10% on luxury items (plane tickets) can have this impact.

Young people by definition have had the least opportunity to accumulate any wealth. Why is it surprising that people with the least money are the hardest hit by price increases?

The youngest voting population will also be the least wealthy segment of the population, and also the ones most hit by the additional costs.

That aside, I don't see from the spend breakdown how it reduces CO2 output. Or, more importantly, how it reduces industrial CO2 output.

What does direct pay to poor citizens have to do with climate change? I've always been told that the best way to do a pigovian tax is to make it revenue neutral. You collect the sin tax, but then your redistribute it based on the average level of tax collected. So someone who uses exactly the average amount of carbon sees no change in buying power. Someone who uses less than average actually sees an increase in buying power. And anyone who uses more than average sees a decrease.

The idea here is to allow the cost of decisions to be felt in the wallet, but not hurt the spending power of those who are making climate-conscious purchasing choices.

Actually, the plan was to redistribute part of the collected tax back to the population. You would get each year a certain amount of money. If you do not emit CO2 (i.e. do not drive, do not fly, have a clean heating system), you would actually earn money.

Evenly distributing the revenue assumes the effect of the negative externality (climate change) is evenly distributed. But climate change tends to harm poorer people more than richer people, so it makes sense to distribute more revenue to them.

Distributing the revenue is not about compensating for harms. It's about ensuring that you don't have a net impact on people who are using the typical amount of energy. The idea is that the tax captures the externalized costs of economic actions, like emitting carbon. Once the cost of the actions is fully priced in, it is reasoned, consumption will decrease to the optimal level given the harm done by consumption.

The biggest problem with this idea is that we don't really know what the costs are going to be.

In practice, poor people would be beneficiaries of a externality-capturing tax, because by and large, rich people use a lot more carbon. More flights, bigger cars, bigger houses, etc.

You're right that you don't need to compensate for harms with such a tax (so my first sentence was imprecise). But I also don't see what's wrong with attempting to distribute (some of) the revenue in such a way to compensate for harms.

> But I also don't see what's wrong with attempting to distribute (some of) the revenue in such a way to compensate for harms.

It becomes a big political fight over how much of the revenue should be directed to social programs, so the tax policy changes every 4 years. A straight rebate gets wide support and taking it away becomes more and more unpopular as people get used to receiving it.

Because the attempt causes the laws to fail in referendum perhaps.

No, redistribution is organized extortion. I make $100, the government takes $50 of it, pockets $30 of that, and then redistributes $20 to those that will keep them in office (A.K.A. a bribe).

Not knowing swedish politics, but in the United States this is nothing more than a political move.

You have a popular bill and you shove something politically unpopular in it, in hopes it will pass anyway.

So its not about preventing climate change, just mitigating its effects.

It depends on the implementation. Such a policy would certainly decrease carbon output. However, it's practically not possible to eliminate all carbon output immediately. For example, if you ban ICE cars (or impose a heavy tax), richer people who can work remotely or own electric cars would be less affected than poorer people who cannot work remote or afford such a car.

The purpose of such a tax would be to prevent climate change by discouraging "needless" activities. Want to take your 10th vacation this year by flying 500 miles? Maybe if the ticket was $20 more expensive that prevents some people, at the margin. If such a tax is gradually increased each year and alternatives get cheaper each year (direct carbon capture, electric cars, renewable energy), then eventually a society will be carbon-sustainable with much less harm to the people at the bottom of the ladder.

> I've always been told that the best way to do a pigovian tax is to make it revenue neutral. You collect the sin tax, but then your redistribute it based on the average level of tax collected.

You were lied to. The best sort of pigovian tax scheme, you collect the tax from those that can pay it. And use the money to help those that can't do what you need them to do.

AKA. Put an excise tax on new gasoline cars. Because someone that can afford a new car can certainly pay the tax. Do the same with business leasing cars. Use the money to fund programs to get poor people out of their gasoline cars and into electric ones.

A gas tax on the other hand will be perceived correctly by poor people as a rubber hose that hurts them a lot. And wealthy not at all.

The young and poor can't afford to increase their cost of living even further. We're already burdened with debt, a shitty job market, unable to afford housing, and are having trouble even finding love and having children. I don't know how much more people expect us to sacrifice. Newsflash, this generation has fucking nothing left to give.

A generational tax. Very interesting. Better get it in before that generation dies and everyone plays the "who do you blame? they're all dead" game like with native american genocide, slavery, etc.

Are you a swedish citizen?

You've mentioned "swedish" twice now in the context of Switzerland. You've got them confused.

Oops

I don’t know where you live, but there is still more to loose. Hundreds died in the Pacific Northwest because of a recent heatwave, many more lost hours at work because businesses were closed down. Adapting to this will require households and businesses purchase air conditioners and utilities will need to update infrastructure to support increased energy demands. All that will lead to increased financial demands on people and businesses. Like it or not, we’re all paying for global warming one way or the other.

An expense for businesses and households that can afford it (and they'll surely write it off their taxes), is not equivalent to the impact on poor people who will be put on the street if they aren't already homeless. It's delusional to think that we'll make any impact on climate change by asking the poor and young to sacrifice what little quality of life they have left. In the end, people are going to vote for their best interests. Rich people that benefit from polluting and exploiting the environment and the poor/young have aligned incentives. Any climate change solution that doesn't include lifting up the poor and helping the young and disenfranchised is a waste of time.

FYI the heat wave in the pacific northwest of north america is due to what's called an omega disruption in the jet stream at that altitude, a phenomenon that is rare and projected to occur less frequently as the global average temperature warms, according to IPCC climate models. Lots of things can be attributed to anthropogenic climate change, that particular occurrence isn't one of them.

Yeah, poor people are paying this tax anyways. No need to impose it a second time on them

The Yellow Vest protests were pretty much caused by increased fuel prices affecting the working class, so it’s not surprising that Switzerland voted to avoid a similar situation.

The young and poor are not responsible for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions, while the ownership class and the industries they own and control are.

The young gain a whole ton from their ancestors green house gas emissions.

Consider it an inheritance to match their quality of life.

Turns out that greenhouse gas emissions are proof that trickle down economics works, but it's just CO2 that trickles down and not money.

This actually seems very reasonable. Due to its size, no unilateral action taken by Switzerland is going to have any meaningful effect on world CO2 output. Kneecapping your population with taxes and restrictions that cannot have any meaningful result is just performative activism to make a certain segment of the population feel better.

For any movement on fighting climate change, you have to deliver short term results. Investing in technology is the clearest path to doing this. Clean power generation, optimized fuel efficiency, and most importantly, carbon sequestration are things that can make a real difference for the climate and also provide economic ROI. I don't understand why this isn't the larger focus. Where's the "Manhattan project" proposal for carbon sequestration?

I wish there had been three polls instead: One for gas, one for heating and one for flights... O:)

I would expect all 3 would have passed then. Each of the proposals likely has slightly different demographics of people that are opposed to it. 1 % margin isnt much to overcome.

>improve heating, direct pay to poor citizens, and many others.

What does "improve heating" mean?

How does "direct pay to poor citizens" help climate change?

Perhaps the law wasn't really about climate change, but was another one of those times where policy someone wanted anyway was being pushed with climate change as an excuse.

In any case I can't form an opinion on this vote result without knowing what was actually being voted on.

> What does "improve heating" mean?

Not Swiss, so this is mostly conjecture, but what is usually included in those types of proposals is to improve housing insulation and the heating network ( in the case of central heating, either per building or more central) making them more efficient, thus requiring less energy to achieve the same effect ( people aren't cold in their homes).

The problem with this post is that it cites a survey of how much Americans are willing to pay to "stop climate change." According to the article 57% are willing to pay $1 a month to "stop climate change" and 23% would pay $40 a month.

As an American, in a well paying IT job, I'd pay $100 IF IT WOULD STOP CLIMATE CHANGE. However, I don't believe the $1, or $40, or $100 is going to do anything. It's far more complex than that.

It reaffirms one of my maxims... beware the worthless survey.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. I'm very worried about climate change, and I would be willing to make any number of sacrifices to _effectively_ combat climate change. However, the question is this:

> _Suppose a proposal was on the ballot next year to add a monthly fee to consumers’ monthly electricity bill to combat climate change. If this proposal passes, it would cost your household $10 every month. Would you vote in favor of this monthly fee to combat climate change, or would you vote against this monthly fee?_

My utility company can barely run their billing website. Paying them $40 a month to "combat climate change" sounds like throwing money into a hole. So no, I wouldn't do that.

Would I vote for legislation that would redirect subsidies from fossil fuels to clean energy sources? Yes! Would I vote for legislation that would place limitations on the production of plastics, even if it meant raising the price of consumer goods? Probably!

I know, I know, there's complexity in these issues, but my point is that I'd be willing to pay more to combat climate change. I'm just picky about who I'm paying it to, whether the costs will be distributed justly, and what they plan to do with that money.

> Would I vote for legislation that would redirect subsidies from fossil fuels to clean energy sources?

FWIW, there are actually fewer "subsidies" to fossil fuels that could actually be redirected than most people here think. When you read HN articles and comments on the "fossil fuel subsidies", in my experience the bulk of these is "fossil fuel has this and that externality, and users of fossil fuels don't have to pay for it, so we count it as a subsidy". Whether you agree that this actually counts as subsidy or not, it's not like you can redirect it.

But in terms of monetary subsidies - don't fossil companies still get more, in percentage points to their revenue, than green companies? This is something which can be easily redirected.

25% of greenhouse cases come from energy generation [1]

There's about ~144.3M taxpayers in the US [2]. If each of us paid $1200 per year, that's ~$173Bn per year [3].

Considering that a nuclear reactor only costs $9Bn to build - that's 20 per year [4]. Considering that there are only 60 in the US currently, and that's about 20% of all electricity generation, and that Nuclear isn't the most efficient form of energy generation - we should be able to replace ~7% of dirtiest energy sources per year.

~7% * 25% = ~1.75% reduction in greenhouse gases (at least). Considering that we need to cut emissions by 60% by 2050 - in 30 years, this would be ~52%, and this is definitely not the most efficient method... It's reasonable to think this is actually enough.

However - considering the average taxpayer's Federal tax bill is about ~$8k - good luck convincing them to increase that by 15%. If you make ~$150k, this would be an extra ~$4k per year in Federal taxes.

If you're in the top 1% - and you make $450k - it would be an extra ~$19k per year...

[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

[2] https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income....

[3] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=100*12*144300000

[4] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=100*12*144300000%2F900...

If you truly care about cost, efficiency, and the environment, you should be looking at Natural Gas plants [1]. They are inexpensive at $60 million each, are more efficient [2] than all other power generators, provide more power (which will be needed for EVs), and is cleaner when taking into account the full lifecycle costs (construction to decommissioning). They also involve less red tape to get constructed, so they can be built quickly.

But you have to look at the decaying grid as well (another plus for Natural Gas because you could afford to do both). A lot of the power generation is lost in the grid. If you invested there, the current generation facilities could operate more efficiently and you could shutdown the dirtiest/least efficient ones over time.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/natural-gas-fired-power-plant...

[2] https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/index.php?tbl=T...

Right. The correct way to phrase this is probably the same as how government procurement actually works. Say, "Shall we build a large solar farm, and shall we pay to upgrade people's houses," and so on. We can pay for all this stuff out of the general fund (i.e. with debt) and raise taxes when the debt service becomes unpalatable. If you asked Americans whether they'd be willing to pay $1000/year so that every American could have heathcare, they'd probably say no too. But they'd say yes if you ask them, "Shall we have universal healthcare."

I would even argue that this might be a more honest framing than the survey. Raising taxes on the poor really isn't done, but it is at least politically viable to raise taxes on the rich from time to time. Asking someone who makes 30k whether they'd pay $500 to stop climate change isn't even relevant, because they're not the ones who would be footing the bill. The more honest question would be, "Shall we have Buffett, Gates, and Bezos pay $500 on your behalf to stop climate change?" I suspect the answer to that survey would be more positive.

I completely agree. My willingness to pay is directly proportional to my conviction in the effectiveness of the proposed solution.

The internet has revealed us to be very picky shoppers. We do a lot of comparison shopping, looking for the "best" deal on the silliest item. That same skepticism applies to policies, even effective ones. I want to fund the best ideas, and the best ideas should be backed by compelling models and, ideally, empirical evidence.

There's something to be said for the VC mindset here: funding many things, each of which has a low probability of succeeding, and using unicorns to subsidize numerous losses. Tax payers don't like losses, but an example of something kind of similar that the government already does today is science funding.

"My willingness to pay is directly proportional to my conviction in the effectiveness of the proposed solution."

I couldn't agree more with that.

So if it said a higher amount of a bigger sacrifice, you think you would get more support? What do you think would be a appropriate survey question to gauge willingness to make personal sacrifice to prevent climate change?

I think its a reasonable question and in line with what practical measures governments are making today to raise money to combat the issue. Maybe you don't believe in the political process to fix handle this issue, but there really isn't another option. And if you really think there's a good chance that the world will end in the next 100 years, why wouldn't you be willing to throw quite literally a few dollars at it?

I have faith we would absolutely do more things like have more of the giant diesel burning trucks that drive around to pick up degradable cardboard on garbage day at a net energy loss in the name of saving the climate.

We just are not good at anything in the US at this point that requires more complexity than a 280 character slogan.

Exactly my thought. I would assume any such fee would either go to money that would already be spent but now funded by the new fee (For example, the tax rebates on solar installations) or else go to porkish things that pretend to be about climate.

Seriously, I would pay every penny I have and forgo pay for the rest of my life to stop climate change. But there is no entity on earth I trust to actually follow through with such a promise to actually accomplish that result.

What a shitty post. I guess I don't believe in climate change after all unless I also believe in public losses for privatized gains. Corporations raked in billions while wrecking the environment and I'm sure they all love framing this as an individual responsibility that we're all "failing" to do.

> In February 2019, the center-right American Action Forum, estimated that the plan could cost between $51–$93 trillion over the next decade [0]

Take the low estimate of $51 trillion over a decade so $5 trillion per year.

> The top 1% of Americans have a combined net worth of $34.2 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data last updated Oct. 19, 2020

So if you seize all the wealth of the top 1% you'll pay for ~7 years of something that no one claims will actually solve climate change.

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

[1] https://windfalldata.com/blog/what-it-takes-to-be-in-the-top...

The American Action Forum is nowhere close to “center-right”, only they call themselves that. It is a conservative think tank that almost exclusively works for Republicans.

Their figures aren’t even in “let’s debate” realm. They cite $36 trillion just for universal healthcare when even the CBO admits that Medicare for All would save $300-600 billion per year. This is nowhere close to good faith accounting, it’s intentionally misleading

The $36T figure isn't unreasonable, just cherry-picked. It's counting up the costs without counting the money that is no longer spent elsewhere.

It's like saying that if I decide to patronize the Chevron station it's going to cost $800/year to buy gas, without considering that I'm currently spending $800/year at the Shell station.

This was the google snippet for green new deal cost. Please provide a better source of the actual cost.

I quick search yields that the best answer is "no-one knows because the proposal remains too vague and too much in-flux to provide an answer".

The CBO has not yet weighed in. That's usually a good starting point for any legislation that's getting seriously close to consideration.

The GND included universal healthcare and jobs programs, both of which are the biggest line items in the AAF estimates. They estimated the cost of dealing with carbon emissions at around $7 trillion. And that money is largely for capital expenditures, which anyone who has half a brain would finance over 20-30 year period. And a large chunk of that $7 trillion can be passed off to utility rate payers over that time period with barely a noticeable increase in rates based on how cheap renewables are getting.

Also, AAF can hardly be trusted to fairly evaluate the cost/benefits. A slight increase in utility bills pales in comparison to having to abandon your house due to increased flooding due to climate change. It is funny how when they are doing analysis of tax cuts, they turn over every stone looking to squeeze out questionable "economic productivity" increases to add to their models, and yet when it comes to climate change, they just throw out a bunch of big numbers and call it a day.

So if you seize all the wealth of the top 1% you'll pay for ~7 years of something that no one claims will actually solve climate change.

Maybe we could buy some healthcare or bike paths or something. The important thing is seizing the wealth of the 1%.

Why do you think you're entitled to 100% of my wealth?

I doubt I'll get it. I don't even get a discount on healthcare.gov. Mostly I'd like to see USA governed by its citizens rather than the rich. If they weren't rich anymore that might happen. Of course the point is that the rich won't allow this. The system will not fix the harms it was designed to create. If something like this went through it would probably take from the (5-1)% and give to the 0.1%.

Got it. Make everyone poor and suffer. Great plan.

The cutoff I've seen for the 1% is $11M net worth. Is everyone poorer than that, "suffering"? What kind of world do you live in?

By definition there's a new 1% when you take the top 1% and make it 0. Then you take the new 1%. And so on.

Simple math. Everyone ends up with zero.

Haha that's the most amusing slippery-slope argument I've seen recently, and it also has a pleasing Zeno's Dichotomy Paradox aspect to it as well. Bravo!

It's easy to throw around numbers without understanding the people behind them. Say the plumber whose business is worth $10 million dollars, pays himself $100k, and re-invests the rest back into his business and his employees. Is he rich? No. That's the problem with ideological socialism. You just want to stick it to the guy who is rich on paper - it has nothing to do with actually improving peoples lives.

I'm not a socialist at all, let alone an "ideological" one. My motivation is not to make people poor. My motivation is to arrange some sort of sovereignty for the vast majority of people. As long as billionaires choose all our public officials [0] while paying minimal taxes [1], we don't have majoritarian rule. If we did have it, this country would be better-run and better for both the people who live here and everyone else in the world.

Even if we can assume there is a single ten-millionaire working plumber (and really, that's far-fetched), such a person won't be harmed if all of the billionaires get trimmed back to her level.

[0] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...

> $51–$93 trillion over the next decade

About right when you spend $1280 on a coffee cup: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-air-force-spent-1280-on-c...

Personally I tend to be skeptical of anything that discusses nationality at all when it comes to climate change, unless we can somehow move all of the pollution outside the environment (into another environment)

> seize all the wealth

How do you propose doing that legally? Or how should the US government survive the wealthy citizen's legal assault if they were to find a loophole?

I'm not. I'm just pointing out that a massive effort requires a broad tax base. I understand everyone wants the wealthy to pay for everything, but there is quite literally not enough wealthy people in the world to begin to tackle a large problem. Everyone has to contribute

You should clarify such; it's not even remotely clear from the original post.

> Take the low estimate of $51 trillion over a decade so $500 billion per year.

Over a decade, that would be $5 Trillion per year since a decade has 10 years.

Thanks for pointing that out. edited

Well at the end of the day, corporations are feeding individual demands to make profits. If individuals demand more sustainable alternatives, I am sure the corporations will pivot.

People refuse to peel garlic themselves, and you see shelves full of pods of garlic, peeled and packed in plastic that ends up in the oceans eventually. If everyone decided tomorrow to just buy whole garlic that doesn't need packaging, corporations will supply you with that.

It's easy to blame corporations, and no doubt with their shady lobbying practices over decades should be accounted for. But individual responsibility also needs to be acknowledged.

Utterly incompetent article, basing all its conclusions on this poll question:

“Suppose a proposal was on the ballot next year to add a monthly fee to consumers’ monthly electricity bill to combat climate change. If this proposal passes, it would cost your household $10 every month.”

It then assumes that voting against the proposal indicates an unwillingness to pay for climate change.

This completely misses the obvious - which is that a $10 monthly fee will not solve climate change and so people are right to vote against the proposal. Indeed it would be ridiculous for people to vote for such a proposal.

Actually if we electrified our homes, most households in the US would save money: https://www.rewiringamerica.org/bringing-infrastructure-home & https://www.rewiringamerica.org/household-savings-report

Of course if you frame it like that they don't want to pay. Americans want billionaires to pay for climate programs since many made a fortune not caring about climate, kept getting richer during a global pandemic, and show no interest in addressing the grotesque wealth inequality in America.

I'll start paying when the people start paying who believe the very same charlatans who fly around in private planes, have several cars and houses, and yachts while traveling to places they could have just as easily teleconferenced to, while also supporting the movement of people from low to high climate change impact countries.

What we need is a voluntary tax to pay for climate change. You want it, sign up for the 10% increase in taxes, it will just be linked to your name and whenever there is a tax, you simply pay an additional 10% more that will all go to fighting climate change. Everything else is really about authoritarianism and subjugation of people one wants to dominate and punish. We could have had people paying 10% voluntary climate change tax for 30+ years now.

The idea the Greta Thunberg has to travel to New York by sailboat is ludicrous, but because of people with your attitude, she did it. You have to work from inside the system to change it.

Paying for climate change is not a luxury elective item. Sometimes a society has to collectively act to protect itself, even over the protestations of people who believe as you do.

> she did it

Heh, at the same time 2 people had to fly to the US to bring the boat back... if she was so concerned, she could have come back on that boat.

Americans pay many fees and taxes that go to environmental concerns. They also see the government does not use that revenue to address those environmental concerns, because instead it goes to state and federal pensions. Therefore, the real issue is, what do Americans have to do to get the government to spend the money on the things they say it is supposed to go to? Until the government is willing to change their spending habits, yes, Americans will be unwilling to contribute more to the national credit card with no limit.

“Americans pay many fees and taxes that go to environmental concerns”

Doubt. Environmentalism is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of US governmental spending.

Edit: it’s .2% of the budget. Defense is a whopping 14%. We spend 70 times less on environmentalism than military and we’re not even at war. Source: http://saveepaalums.info/EPA+costs+to+taxpayers

And your point is what? You just provided the exact evidence to what I already stated. Parts of the gas tax, excise taxes, vehicle sales tax, recycling fees, etc... are all fees that Americans pay that are supposed to go to addressing impact on the environment. But the government only spends 0.2% on it. Where did the money go? That is exactly my point. Most of it went to pay pensions that the government over promises on and doesn't budget enough for. Any business that did that would be out of business or switching to 401ks, which most have done.

1) most of those taxes aren’t specifically for environmental policies. For example, vehicle taxes go to fund roads 2) no, most of government spending does not go to funding pensions and there’s absolutely no evidence to support that. That claim is absolutely ludicrous.

Newsflash, most taxes have loopholes in them to allow the money to be used on things other than what they were intended for [1]. Vehicle taxes are used for multiple purposes, not just roads. Currently, 7.2% of GDP goes to pensions [2], and that is just the federal government's part. States' contributions would easily double that figure.

[1] https://reason.org/policy-brief/how-much-gas-tax-money-state...

[2] https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/pensions_spending

In case you need me to Google that for you some more...

US GDP is currently 21.43 Trillion dollars.

7% of that is 1.5 Trillion dollars.

The 2020 Federal budget was 4.79 Trillion dollars.

So, pensions are roughly a quarter of federal government spending every year and growing.

Since when is a quarter “most of”

You’re disagreeing with yourself

If you plotted all the other things the government spends money on, pensions would be the biggest chunk. Stop being dense.

By comparison, the US only spends 3.4% GDP on the military per year.

And then there's those of us Americans who've already been sacrificing nearly our entire lives to try to protect the environment because we were taught young that we only have the one planet, and if we trash it, it's pretty much over. Those of us who remember when climatologists first warned about climate change and took it seriously. Those of us who've tolerated insults and ridicule over our "paranoia", and still to this day get ridiculed by those who still don't believe climate change is a thing, or that it's affected by human activity. But hey, Americans aren't willing to do anything about climate change... Yeah, whatever... It's our politicians and their corporate owners that don't want to do anything about anything. And like most governments in the world today, "we the people" no longer have any control over our "public servants". They pretty much just do as they want whether we like it or not. Doesn't really matter who we vote in to office if all the candidates we're offered are already corrupt corporate puppets from the get-go.

For these numbers to say anything about lack of interest in combating climate change. We would also need to know what people would answer if you switched out climate change with some other worthwhile cause. How many would want to pay 40$ for better firefighters, solve structural racism, water security in western states, or military veterans? Without something to compare it with, there is no context to say if the numbers are good or not.

I wonder if what this actually shows is that people don't like to pay taxes? Or that they think climate change should be possible to solve with the current tax rate with a reprioritizing of tax money?

There. The federal government has been blowing billions in Afghanistan, I'm sure they can try to use it on something else instead of levying more taxes from me and my coworkers.

I always say, if you're going to invest in fixing a foreign country, start with Mexico.

I think "people" aren't given enough credit. They're actually pretty smart. They know that, when they're questioned by a surveyor, they can feel better about themselves by claiming that they'd be willing pay to address climate change. They know they can get that psychological benefit completely for free without having to do anything other than just answering the question in a certain way. So that makes surveys about the issue seem pretty meaningless; their outcomes have very little to do with the actual issue being surveyed.

Also, people are actually pretty smart because they know that every other individual in the economic arena will act in their own best interest. So they make the correct decision of saving money for themselves. That's exactly why any sort of individual brow beating always strikes me as totally misguided and counterproductive. People are not likely to spontaneously move to solve such a large problem when doing so puts them at an individual loss. It doesn't matter if you think that sort of behavior is immoral or unethical.

On the other hand, it seems to me that large organizations such as corporations and governments have many more incentives to mitigate large scale issues like this for a couple of reasons: 1) They can more easily coordinate since there are fewer organizations of that size that have to cooperate; 2) They are in a better position to quantify the risk of failing to act. There are probably plenty of corporate strategists that are starting to raise the alarm about a possible future world in which it's impossible to make any money as a result of a climate catastrophe.

I've never really been able to get on board with ways of arguing about climate change that fit the mold of this article. Individuals simply are not going to act to solve this problem. Get over it and move on.

I agree that large organizations and governments have more incentives and more resources to tackle a large issue like this.

This poll doesn't say much about whether Americans are willing to pay to stop climate change, it just says a lot about whether Americans trust their government with a blank check to fight climate change. I wouldn't support "giving them money and letting them figure out the best way to use it", either. Let's hear a specific policy proposal.

1. Carbon tax 2. Cap and trade

The problem is NOT that there have been no good proposed policy solutions. The problem is that voters don't want them. This is why I'm pessimistic on the environment.

Doesn't work. Because corporations find loopholes around the law to achieve an "equivalent" of carbon reduction, that doesn't actually reduce it, but still call themselves green. If anyone thinks that planting a few trees actually reduces carbon given how much the Chinese pump out, I have a bridge in Brooklin to sell you.

You can trivially set up a carbon tax that a majority of voters would vote for, simply give the money that you taxed back out equally among the population as a form of UBI.

We don't see these proposals because they are not proposals that the wealthy and powerful would benefit from.

The wealthy and powerful have also ensured that this sort of thing would be controversial among the low income populations who would benefit the most of these policies. Tribal politics is the wedge that divides the lower classes and ensures there will never be a unified class based effort to uproot the profitable status quo enjoyed by the upper classes.

Exactly. Making the whole "I don't trust the government to do something smart with my money" argument moot. It has been proposed, voters have seen the proposal, and it has been voted down.

Well this presumes two things, one, that there are no valid arguments against cap and trade, and two, that propaganda against cap and trade is not effective. But both are true. Plenty of people do oppose cap and trade simply because those influencing their political stripe loudly oppose it, and plenty of people have valid concerns about what the effects of such a scheme would be and potential downsides to it.

One particular argument would be that there would probably be all sorts of exemptions and subsidies so as to make it ineffective against the largest producers of CO2, which is a version of "I don't trust the government to do something smart with my money," making it not a moot point after all.

Climate change is a collective action problem; the fact that people don't want to solve it with voluntary donations doesn't imply that they think the problem is unimportant.

It would be equally reasonable to propose that roads or police or militaries should be funded solely with voluntary donations, and then use support for that proposal as a measure of public sentiment towards the necessity of those functions. Of course, these functions are used as canonical justifications for the existence of the state in the first place.

> The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

--John Steinbeck in Cannery Row (published 1945)

It's worth noting that there's a lot more being said when that is placed in context, and in the mouth and circumstances of the character speaking those words, than when it's presented, bare, as an aphorism due the author.

(it's on archive.org, for the curious)

My opposition comes from my lack of faith in the US government and my state government.

If we pay $10, what percentage actually goes to fighting climate change, and what percentage goes to pensions and interest payments on debt.

We had our sales tax raised "for the children" to make our schools better. Money goes into the general fund.

I'm not sure the solution, but I have doubts the US government can handle money.

This is pretty obvious. My most outspoken Green New Deal supporting friends & family who were reposting social media of Greta & AOC are also 0-1 child households with SUVs.

It's hashtag activism. No one wants to make sacrifices.

The only solutions are going to be finding ways to grow our way out of it and incentivize good things (fuel economy, EVs, rail, solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal heat pumps, etc).

Neither Degrowth nor expecting people to vote their conscience with their wallet are going to work.

Even today - look at how tax incentivized solar is, and how fast the break-even is.. and yet how few people take advantage of it?

I put solar panels on my last house. You know what impact it had? Zero. Why? Because renewable energy sources are more costly, less efficient, and have a greater environmental impact over the full lifecycle than Natural Gas Plants [1]. If we replaced all power generators with Natural Gas plants (which Europe is doing because they already realized this fact), you could realize the carbon savings and generate the power that will be needed for future electrification demands.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/index.php?tbl=T...

Speaking of solar do you have it installed on your house? Even with tax credits do you know how much they cost, they are not cheap. And financing it isn't like a car. Sure it's 1% finance but add like 10K finance charge which kills the rebate. All on top of that you actually have to own a home, which is becoming impossible in america.

Not yet because you only want to install on a newer roof otherwise you pay a lot to uninstall/reinstall on roof replacement.

Relative to price of a home, they are cheap, under $10k without storage. People spend 2-5x more on a kitchen or bathroom cosmetic remodel.

If you need financing, you can use a HELOC. The break even is like 4 years.

Your statements are fairly hyperbolic considering something like 60% of Americans own their home, so it can't be impossible.

Try $20k plus a re-roof at $10k. And that is for a small 1200sqft 3 bed/1 bath house that has full south-southwest exposure.

> Even today - look at how tax incentivized solar is, and how fast the break-even is.. and yet how few people take advantage of it?

In most areas? Not fast at all, and very close to the expected life of the panels for consumer-grade house panels considering the up-front investment.

Have you used any calculators from an installer like Tesla or frequented solar owners forums to read about actual experiences?

It is extremely dependent on the state you reside, how much electric you use & the energy company you have as incentives vary.

Tesla, in NY on PSEG LI for example- $9K would get you 8kW solar w/o storage $20K would get you 12kW solar + some storage, installation and tax included

In New York State with Fed, state and utility incentives it's like 4 years.

Hmmm. No. The payback is 20 years, which is the length of the panel life, and the limit on time the utilities have to pay you for the energy. After that, they get the energy from you for free.

You are making sweeping negative statements without specifying where in your experience this is the case. 20 year pay back would have to be a state with super low electric prices and absolutely zero incentives.

Please specify where this is the case and why, per your math.

Fed is 22% tax rebate, NY state is $5k incentive.. and power in the state ranges in the 20-30c/kWh range.. so pretty expensive power with pretty good incentive.

Yes, continue the explanation with your math, including the part where you don't actually get that rebate; as part of the solar program financing, you have to hand that rebate over to the bank to pay the finance fees, which is factored into the financing. Otherwise the monthly payments go up, and you end up paying more per month than you generate energy. I was in RI and RI rates and program is similar to NY's.

Hard to control for how many of the "no" responses are due to lack of trust that the government will actually spend the money fighting global warming vs people just not willing to part with money.

The 'government' at all level has enormous unfunded liabilities and a consistent record of siphoning revenue raised through special taxes into completely unrelated expenditures.

This is like asking if one would pay more taxes, where it is unclear how the tax will be used to improve common good.

I bet if you ask people if they are willing to pay $1000 dollars (financed as $40/m in 25 months) to secure a spaceship ticket to escape the failing earth climate (assuming the spaceship already exists), many people will happily pay it.

and the spaceship tech owner can just use that money to build and implement clean energy solutions to revert climate change, and never really need to build the actual spaceships..

I clicked through to the actual poll, and just for some context the actual poll is from 2018.

Not that I think attitudes are likely to have changed substantially, but after the power grid collapses in both Texas and California it is possible that there has been movement towards recognizing that there are costs we will pay one way or another and that paying them while also having reasonable climate is much more comfortable in the long term.

It's a good point though, asking whether someone believes climate change is real is a very low bar. It's like literacy rates, the rate depends on what grade level you define as literate. Once literacy gets high enough for a given definition you have to make the criteria more stringent to see differences. So step 1 is "is this real" and step 2 is "what would you sacrifice to stop it". We're still barely past step 1...

I saw some of this first hand not long ago.

I tend to vote conservative, yet my frugal (ok, cheap) nature makes me a natural energy-saver. As an example, I tend to buy cars like a Prius or something with modest fuel needs. I look for ways to save electricity around the house. etc.

I was conversing on social media with a colleague from my hometown. We were (regrettably) talking politics, she made what she considered a 'drop the mic' point by stating "I vote this way because I believe in the science of climate change!"

The irony: her family hobby (with husband) is drag racing. They take great pride in their fuel-sucking Camaro, complete with truck rig to pull it.

I guess we're both turned around.

When you see companies asking everyone to commute back to the office does it seem like climate change crossed their minds?

The government isn't willing to stop climate change either. I REALLY want to do a large solar panel setup at my house, but it looks like there's no way around paying through the anus for the ground mount "system" instead of buying 2" pipe with concrete set in the ground every 8 feet. Because then I would be inventing it myself.

Yet if I want PG&E there is NO FUCKING PERMIT and you just do it. Explosive results.

The methodology of arriving st the conclusion in the title is flawed. Polling people "would you want to pay the government extra money to fight climate change" tells you a more nuanced story than "people won't put their money where their mouth is."

Americans in particular, and people in general, don't trust their government to mediate solutions to problems. If you gave a more concrete solution rather than just "we are gonna effectively raise your taxes and do what we say with the money, efficiently and effectively, promise" I'm sure you'd get a lot more support. But people that pay into social security and then watch that fund get plundered and be on the verge of bankruptcy, asking those people if they'd give the government money so they can manage a fund directed solely at solving a problem and then being surprised when the answer is "no," to attribute that to not actually caring and only paying lip service to the problem is quite a leap.

One of example: my electric company offers green energy at about $0.15 more per unit than non green energy. If that was it I and many people would go green, but if you read the fine print that is a variable rate and could be much higher in high demand. That green power isn’t worth the real potential of a thousand dollar electric bill.

>Suppose a proposal was on the ballot next year to add a monthly fee to consumers’ monthly electricity bill to combat climate change. If this proposal passes, it would cost your household $10 every month.

The article says people say no so they aren't will to stop climate change but $10 on the electricity bill is no way going to stop climate change!

I wish people would get real with this and say "We figure a global carbon price of $200 a ton would fix climate change. Would you be up for that?" Which might actually work. I mean you'd have to get global buy in but it would be a real solution rather than the dumb, ineffective, CO2 keeps going up anyway stuff they do now.

Translation: people are skeptical of paying money to the government to fix something when they don't even bother to specify a plan of action

I'm looking at dropping 25k on solar panels soon to have a zero electric bill, so I'm doing my part I guess.

As someone interested in doing this, does this include installation cost or are you doing it yourself? What percentage of the cost is installation?

Also what capacity does it provide for air conditioning? I don't use air conditioning all that much but I would like the option and I know you have to plan your install for peak usage and not general usage, and you can mitigate that with batteries but that cost has diminishing returns.

Turn key. 9.5kw system. Averages out to about a $0 electric bill for the year, this is in texas so AC is a must. This is grid tie system so during summer months I will pull more than I make, but will make up for it in winter months, averaging it out to 0.

Throwing money at climate change doesn't fix it. Telling entities that already ravage the planet does. But which one do you think is easier for everyone universally to say "I'm helping!" without actually doing anything?

It should say: "are not willing to pay extra". My guess is that most people already pay an awful lot in taxes, so they would be more willing for some of those taxes they already pay be shifted to climate change initiatives.

> the group most likely to be willing to pay $40 a month are those making less than $10,000 (5.6% of population, 55.32% oppose).

This points more to the weakness of the study than anything else.

Not necessarily, poor people are actually known to be surprisingly generous.

If I had any confidence in my government, I might be willing to consider supporting government action, but I don't. They've burned all of their reputation points.

We'll definitely pay, though.

We will pay tomorrow ♪ ♫ ♬ We're gonna pay tomorrow ♪ ♫ ♬ We will pay tomorrow ♪ ♫ ♬ Save me, save me from tomorrow ♪ ♫ ♬

The world should pay me trillions to solve climate change. I'll do whatever it takes to make climate change a thing of the past. What's that? You don't want to pay me Trillions to solve your problem that I say you have? Well, that makes you a climate change denier and worse of all, a Science denier. You are literally dooming humanity because you are selfish & greedy & don't want to pay me Trillions. How dare you! You should feel shame.

People aren't wired to protect against future threats. Adaptation is going to be a whopper.

Given the way that housing, health care and education costs are spiraling out of control it makes sense that the average American wouldn't want to pay anything to mitigate climate change. And they shouldn't be asked to, and its not really necessary.

(not necessary for them to pay in order to mitigate climate change. mitigating climate change should be done, but it doesn't need to be expensive)

I can see some aliens look at earth and say "There're some smart individuals, but as a group humans are so dumb."

Just last night a BC. Village was destroyed by fire after breaking heat records at 49C. I posted the story to hn just now, not sure if I should link to it or not, but there are lots of news outlets covering it if you are curious (Eg, CBC)

I read in WaPo that the residents of the Florida condos that collapsed had refused to pay for the necessary repairs in 2019 [1]. Now many of them who made that decision are dead. If we can't make rational decisions in this situation, how can we make rational decisions about climate change.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/majority-of-fl...

This is why economic growth is key to climate change. As disposable income grows for the median household, adoption for socially acceptable goods will increase. When you increase taxes and regulations everywhere, you decrease the ability to adopt pro-climate consumerism.

No, that just increases people's desire for material goods even more. There is no fixed level of material wealth people expect.

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