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Comment by 55873445216111 | Hacker News Reader

I agree! Add the cost of CO2 into the price of gas. But don't ban inefficient speciality cars. I happen to be someone who really enjoys driving performance cars that happen to get really poor fuel economy. I have no problem paying the cost of the CO2 I generate. But I find it very irritating when people say we need to ban these cars outright.

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> Add the cost of CO2 into the price of gas.

Is there a cost? I would say it is priceless - because we do not have any mechanism to funnel that money into undoing the CO2. And no, planting trees are not the opposite of taking oil from deep underground. Once that oil is out it remains in the above-surface carbon cycle. While it is underground it would never even be part of it. So any price would be made up - and just funneled to some interest group. The "compensation" does not actually compensate anything. This is the danger of only thinking in "money". I paid, problem magically solved!

We have that mechanism: carbon sequestration. It's what taxes on gasoline should be directly funding.

I like performance cars. They're neat. I don't agree that poorer people should shoulder a greater burden for societal adaptation to threats. If you have a high polluting performance vehicle, maybe it can be restricted in a normalizing fashion when used for transportation or recreation within some arbitrary boundary, like speed limits to some extent (though I'm aware of the caveats), but then if you can throw money at it anyway, you should at least for some time be able to take it to a track where they can set their own rules. I don't think physical performance limiters should be placed on vehicles at all, especially ones that are grandfathered in, but some people shouldn't have the ability to just disregard things in daily in daily life that the place has democratically decided upon only because the money is available. Or maybe it could be a condition of licensing within a certain area. Great you get the car, but can only drive it where you don't need valid insurance. If you want to drive it anyway, you need to have a limiter, or the car is impounded

There are a lot of valid arguments against ethanol, but performance is not one of them. If performance is the primary virtue, all performance vehicles should be burning 100% ethanol, and if in a place where sugarcane can be turned into ethanol, being carbon neutral. In other places, pay a corn-carbon tax.

I agree we cannot burden poorer people. I think the least-worst way to handle the whole situation is with a carbon-tax and dividend.

> I don't agree that poorer people should shoulder a greater burden for societal adaptation to threats.

I don't get that? If do adopt a carbon tax, then the rich guy who wants to drive a performance car pays a lot more, than the poor person who take the bus.

> If you have a high polluting performance vehicle, maybe it can be restricted in a normalizing fashion when used for transportation or recreation within some arbitrary boundary, like speed limits to some extent [...]

That sounds awfully intrusive and full of loopholes, that only people who can afford expensive lobbyists and lawyers can exploit.

> [...] but some people shouldn't have the ability to just disregard things in daily in daily life that the place has democratically decided upon only because the money is available.

How would paying your democratically-decided-on carbon tax be the same as disregarding anything?

>I don't get that? If do adopt a carbon tax, then the rich guy who wants to drive a performance car pays a lot more, than the poor person who take the bus.

But the poor guy with a beat 20 year old car in a badly insulated rental pays more than the rich guy with his Tesla and energy neutral villa.

Good, do we care about the planet or cheap access to highly emitting vehicles.

“Who cares about all those poors, right?”

“Who cares about climate change when it means I’ll have to take the bus or apply for some electric car subsidy, right?”

Please don't argue in favour of electric car subsidies (or any other subsidies).

That's just needless paperwork, and never catches all use cases. Eg the guy who walks doesn't get an electric car subsidy. Or the guy who practices hypermiling on his ICE, vs the guy who drives his ICE like a maniac. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermiling

Much easier to just apply an emission tax (or a cap-and-trade program) and let people figure it out by themselves without extra paperwork and government favouritism.

Why not tax the rich more and use that money to help the poor emit less?

That doesn’t work. As long as the cheap option is available that’s what people will use.

Unless you’re suggesting we tax the cheap option, in which case you’re saying the same thing.

I'm suggesting we tax the luxurious option and use that money to improve the cheap option.

Eh, that's what eg income taxes are for.

If you want to do redistribution to help the poor, the impact of the overall tax system is important. You don't need to make every single tax progressive.

Individual taxes, especially sin taxes, should be designed to do their job as efficiently as possible.

I didn't say anything about a carbon tax. I was talking more about agreed upon restrictions that can't simply have money thrown at them to just keep doing what they're doing. This carries over to a number of different policy decisions that have naive approached to truly reducing them. Like the real estate market, noise pollution, other pollution. Put another way, would you be chill about the local high-polluting company continuing to dump sewage into water ways if they're paying some fee? Probably not. People driving performance cars around can already afford the extra expense of having them, either for status or fun or whatever, I don't necessarily want to make it even more exclusive. A different example would be those disgusting coal-rollers that fuckheads drive. Do I want them to be able to drive in the city because they can afford to sink the cost and do it anyway? No.

It sounds like you’re mad that it goes fast and don’t care about taxing actual emissions.

Making egregious polluting a rich-only club? Outright banning sounds more attractive.

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