>>> We should tax the hell out of every ounce of carbon emitted and use money from this tax to pay basic income so that people are able to live with increased prices. Free market will sort the rest out
Sarcasm?
Sarcasm?
Which they will use as an excuse for more taxes.
See the pattern?
——
This comment has two further comments, both of which ask questions. But since this comment is heavily downvoted, I cannot reply to the replies to answer the questions.
In short: no such thing as “negative externalities”, thats just make-believe to whitewash oppression and poverty creation. Taxes are not a market signal by definition. Its interesting how blithely people accept using violence to force others to comply with their wishes.
If you really wanted to reduce CO2 you would support safe clean nuclear. But CO2 isnt causing warming- its historically low, earth started at %100 CO2. Plants evolved to need levels 5 times higher than present. Increased CO2 would improve the environment. We had an ICE AGE at 10 times higher CO2 then now. ETC.
Unfortunately Government propaganda has replace science education.
Taxing carbon emission significantly sends price signal to every actor in the market that uses products and services that have carbon emission upstream to maybe reduce usage of such products and services or switch to another.
Your comment is blatant virtue signalling -- it's taking a moral high ground without providing any alternatives.
[edit] At least you've provided an alternative now: nuclear energy. Then again, you only did it when pushed to.
> We should tax the hell out of every ounce of carbon emitted and use money from this tax to pay basic income so that people are able to live with increased prices.
So far so good.
> Free market will sort the rest out
Under free market, the basic income will cause a further price increase, rendering the effort moot.
Subsidizing energy, as Kosovo and Kazakhstan have been doing (resulting in the same consequences on coin mining and crackdown), is necessary, and thus so are the consequences.
Would you really just keep paying more for energy because you have that? The payback period on solar panels just went *0.3, batteries just became a affordable option for day/night balancing, many alternative investments in renewable energy just became profitable.
Many people will use that opportunity to get ahead financially. I think that’s what GP meant with “the free market will sort out the rest”
> we’ll give you $2000p.a. to compensate for the increased energy bill. Would you really just keep paying more for energy because you have that?
In the suggested policy I was replying to, the $2k would decrease if I (and many others) switched to renewable. That loss would muddy the gains, discouraging the switch. Besides, the methods you are describing tend to have high upfront costs.
Hence, the need for subsidizing instead, something very close, but without a negative-feedback-loop incentive.
To be fair, while that is a reasonable policy (and why so many countries enact it), I would favor requiring each company to be individually carbon-neutral, with an exponential penalty. As a result, it is not a tax which could weaken the vulnerable, and yet it forces companies to choose between reducing their negative externalities, and bankruptcy.
But computing carbon-neutrality is hard.
My underlying assumption is that you would reduce the 2k compensation in my example. So the incentive for any saving remains.
On duration: I installed solar for 0.80€ (ex vat) per Wp (which generates about 1kWh p.a.). In NL electricity rates recently spiked to 0.45 euro per kWh. Based on that, payback time is now less than 2 years (that includes everything, panels, inverter and installation, etc.)
but I think we agree the challenge is to find a way to create a good market incentive for consumers and industry to reduce their externalities/CO2.
I'm thinking probably ignorance as the comment also thinks that raising the costs of energy used to produce BTC will somehow make it less profitable to mine when in fact it will simply increase commodity value and most likely drive more interest and increase speculation thus consuming more energy.