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Comment by ineiti | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

Are you a swedish citizen?

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

Oops

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.

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.

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

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.

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).

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