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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

In the Canadian federal election a couple of weeks ago, 95% of votes went to parties that had a carbon tax of some sort in their platform.

Canadians aren't very different from Americans. It can be done.

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The people are similar, yes. The underlying socioeconomic and sociopolitical systems are likely different tho'. We (i.e., the USA) too often talk a good game, but the actions are disconnected.

Just one example, the Paris Climate Agreement isn't what most believe it is. The targets aren't tight enough, and there's nothing binding. Compliance is voluntary. Yet it has been and continues to be heralded as essential. An essential paper tiger?

Per Naomi Klein

https://www.wnyc.org/story/coveringclimatenow-naomi-klein-gr...

Of course there are other examples.

I agree the US is a bit more oligarchic than other similar nations, but not sure what the Paris climate accord examples proves?

America was the main holdout, and it wasnt because they thought it wasn't effective enough, quite the opposite. So yes its pretty vital that we do at least that much.

It proves this...it was sold as a major accomplishment. It was sold as one of that POTUS' defining moments. And it wasn't any of that. The USA held it up. The USA made sure it had no teeth.

So the talk was "We're so great" the reality is that's BS.

How many Canadians are there in the CCP leadership? China is around 30% of the globes emissions, Canada is 1.5%.

Alarmist statements are not going to do anything to Chinese policy. The only thing that is going to work is having a technically better source of energy to move to.

There is a straight forward (but not easy) solution to the China problem. It's called the carbon club, and William Nordhaus won the Nobel Memorial prize for his paper on it. Germany is currently leading the charge to get one set up.

i disagree that it would have efficacy, china already is trying to build parallel economic system if needed with cultivation of economic relation in south america and africa. china setting herself up to be to those continents as we were to her, will survive without any carbon membership.

The EU has a pretty history of forcing their citizens foot the bill for lazy corporations failure to do anything in the interest of society or humanity. The most recent example was when they(Germans, EU) was pushing for a digitalization tax so that corporations could have the tax payer foot the bill for their failure to invest money into themselves rather than funeling it out. There are countless examples of this happening in institutions within Germany that used to be public and were half privatized.

Carbon tax is yet another one of these examples where the tax payer has been sold on the idea that they have to foot the bill for the big corps selfishness.

Completely absurd that these things are even presented as a solution. As for China being a problem? I think all the people that worked decades to push everything to China with complete disregard for anything share some blame?

And then at the same time the IAEA was actually supposed to be an institution to help the world forward in safe nuclear energy development.

Talking about Chinas carbon footprint, while ignoring why it's the worlds biggest polluter is kinda how we kept saying how horrible their and some other countries in the areas ocean trash pollution is while omitting that we were the ones shipping our trash there.

But yes, this is the past and now it's different, but just erasing history doesn't give a good ground for a constructive discussion.

And re: carbon club and China, Germany will never defy China. It's their biggest importer. In the end it's all rhetoric. They just recently released a statement how they want to discuss the Xinjiang issue on mutual understanding. They spent a decade promising other countries to setup a parallel remittance system, which never materialized. It's all talk and no substance

You know what those emissions in China are for right? China is the factory of the world, they build the things that we consume. So applying a carbon tax in Canada will make those goods more expensive and reduce the demand, reducing China's footprint.

A carbon tax without tariffs would not work. The big question is if Canada can impose such tariffs that locally produced low-carbon emitting products has a economical advantage over those produced and later shipped from china.

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