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Comment by lelag | Hacker News Reader

I think there a comparatively simple measure that would work just as well: just price the externality of using fossil fuels directly by introducing a carbon tax at the source, that is levied by the fossil fuels companies and baked in the raw ressources.

Start with a reasonably low tax so that you don't suddenly tank the economy and announce mandatory annual increase of x% in that tax and watch the problem solves itself.

By knowing in advance when fossil fuel stop making economic senses, users will have to plan for switching to renewable alternatives.

Also, use the carbon tax money to fund massive CO2 removal projects.

I feel it would be a pretty simple and effective solution which is not going to be implemented because it would need to be implemented worldwide and developing countries don't want to be told that there will be burden imposed on them than the west did not have in their time.

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A carbon tax by itself just passes the problem on to people who can't do anything about it.

You need to include programs to help migrate people off their carbon dependency.

The people who would be most affected by a carbon tax are also the people who have the least amount of resources to do anything about it.

On a personal level, it would be pretty easy to deal with such a tax: I can think of only 2 use-case for normal people to buy fossil fuels directly: to power ICE and to heat their home.

Programs to help people migrate away from using ICE and oil boiler already exist in many places.

By starting small and giving a timetable, you signal people that they have x years to act and that they really should migrate away from using those.

A carbon tax on raw ressources would be most impactful where the real emission are happening: transportation, industry and electricity generation.

For sure, pricing the externalities of the use of fossil fuel at the source would make some things that are currently cheap, expensive: air travel, cement production...

But if those activities are destroying the environment, maybe it's not such a bad idea to make them more expensive. Then you would see real effort to find solution to lower the carbon footprint of those.

When I'm talking about a gradual increase, I'm thinking about a slow gradual increase over a long period (eg: 20 years+) so the carbon taxation program starts pretty painless for most and leave enough time for the world to adapt and get rid of that carbon dependency.

That makes no sense. End consumers have the ultimate power to do something else. If the option isn't there, we now have economic incentives such that an entrepenur ca make a killing providing that service.

The bit you are missing from examples like the australian carbon tax, you provide compensation to the consumer, so only the middle man feels the pinch. This worked well when introduced.

> I think there a comparatively simple measure that would work just as well: just price the externality of using fossil fuels directly by introducing a carbon tax at the source, that is levied by the fossil fuels companies and baked in the raw ressources.

In the end, the rich elites - those producing an amount of CO2 emissions that is obscene compared to the amount normal people produce - would simply not care and pay a bit more money. For people who have yachts with tanks large enough to require 100.000$ or more for a single fill or with their own private jets, even tripling fuel prices would still be laughable petty cash, whereas tripling fuel prices would have a devastating impact on people needing their car to get to work.

"Pricing in externalities" to steer consumers towards a specific behavior (= here, limiting CO2 emissions) only works in an economy where the majority of participants are at a similar level of wealth. Otherwise, 99% will be forced to drastically cut their life style while the 1% keeps on going merrily. That is only one thing, a recipe for massive social unrest.

Price the emission of CO2 based on the cost of sequestering it.

If the rich elites produce an obscene amount of CO2, they pay enough money to remove the same obscene amount of CO2 from the atmosphere (or even more than they produce, it could be a progressive tax).

That does not solve the social issue that is at the core. A multi-billionaire won't care about the emission sequestration cost - it's simply impossible to spend down 20 billion dollars or more outside of donating all of it, which in any case only a handful of that caste does like Bill Gates, and even he has IIRC complained that it's hard to donate the money simply because it grows faster than it can be donated. Between his initial pledge in 2010 and now, despite billions of donations and a divorce, his net worth doubled [1].

If societies wish to avoid a revolution by the masses, the answer to luxury yachts and private jets must be bans and confiscations, not peanut payments. We've seen the potential for unrest with the French Yellow Vests - they started out as a protest against rising fuel prices due to a carbon tax [2], and the hike was a relatively harmless one compared to what will come should the true cost ever be reflected!

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62162300

[2] https://www.npr.org/2018/12/03/672862353/who-are-frances-yel...

It's hard to tell if you are pro- or anti-revolution.

I think you are suggesting that banning and confiscation of rich people's CO2 emmissions is a good thing. Which kind of sounds revolutionary to me.

But you also seem to be against a carbon tax, because it would cause social unrest and lead to revolution. But also against it because it wouldn't affect rich people enough and would harm poor people.

There seems to be several obvious, non-revolutionary solutions to this, but I don't know if you're avoiding them because you want a revolution or the complete opposite i.e. you don't want any change from the status quo.

> It's hard to tell if you are pro- or anti-revolution.

Politically I am all in favor of a revolution. The amount of change necessary to fight off the worst of climate change is unfeasible to achieve in most Western societies, simply because the ones profiting off of the status quo have bought out politics and mass media (see e.g. the Murdoch empire or Fox News and their ilk) since decades, and because the ones in power have done everything they can to prevent democratic change (gerrymandering) or to dismantle trust in democracy itself ("the election was stolen!!!"). I cannot see any way that this changes without what will be effectively civil war.

Socially however? Revolutions tend to lead to an awful lot of death, suffering and instability for decades, often with an even worse outcome than the status quo - just look at what happened after the Arab Spring events. I won't shed tears for any billionaire that ends up with a punishment for their crimes against humanity no matter if they are judged by someone in this world or in whatever form of afterlife there is, but I'd like to avoid unnecessary bloodshed.

The most problematic trend I see is political radicalization: on the far-right side, propaganda and brainwashing has already led to an attempted putsch in the US, and general terrorism from the far-right has shockingly escalated - bombings, mass murder sprees with explicit fascist manifestos and general organized hate crime against anything the far-right dislikes are commonplace. And on the far-left side, we have young people who are really desperate that the planet will be unable to support human life rather sooner than later (backed by actual scientific research)... which means both sides feel that they have nothing left to lose. Obviously, the far-right side doesn't have anything but conspiracy myths (e.g. "great replacement") to back their claims.

Now, should Western countries succumb to internal conflicts - and it's way, way too likely that the next two years' elections will lead one side to that - there is something even worse at play: China and Russia will graciously take and fill whatever power gap the Western countries leave behind, and neither of these countries has a halfway decent track record regarding climate change.

tl;dr: we're fucked, one way or the other, and there is no nice and perfect happy ending I can see.

China has a decent track record on climate change.

They're aiming for net zero in 2060, peak emmisions by 2030, they've had a carbon tax for a while. They're the global hub of the solar pv, EV, lithium battery industries, already started on becoming a leader in hydrogen electrolizer production. They've been building nuclear and wind at scale, high speed rail, HVDC connectors and so on.

Why would you specifically worry about them in regards to climate change? They're not stupid, and even if they're evil and want to take over the world renewables are likely the quickest way to get there (particularly if their rivals ignore the issue for short term political gain).

Their five year plan is linked here:

https://climatechampions.unfccc.int/chinas-net-zero-future/

I can't guarantee some perfect happy endings, but supporting carbon taxes is probably going to help a fair bit, that's why the EU and China and basically every developed nation is doing them.

I mean if I told you there's a 'flub tax' in Canada, Mexico, EU, UK, China, Japan, New Zealand but no 'flub tax' in the USA, would you guess that the 'flub tax' helps or hurts the poor?

Always, without fail, whenever the talk falls on taxing CO2, someone will bring up "think of the poor". Usually someone who would otherwise do nothing to help the poor.

It is pretty simple, we have to do something about everyone's emissions, including the poor's. If that places an unbearable burden on the poor, maybe we should do something in addition, in order to help the poor. Like UBI, making public services free, forcing employers to pay decent wages, building sufficient cheap housing, and a lot of other stuff.

> Always, without fail, whenever the talk falls on taxing CO2, someone will bring up "think of the poor".

The thing is: even if the masses cut back on CO2 to the point they are barely surviving, all that saving will be a drop in the bucket compared to the emissions caused by the rich. And the masses aren't dumb, everyone with half a brain can realize they are being shafted. I would really prefer a way out of disaster that does not lead to immense death and suffering from either a revolution (which will come inevitably once the pressure gets too high) or from climate change consequences.

your inclusion of political violence here has conversational gravity .. when it is survival at stake, suddenly all efficient, stable thinking goes out the window. It becomes "fastest animal" race for the door (or mountaintop fortress or whatever).

Simple efficiency is a real solution given actual implementation. Do not throw out goodwill and stability with this political violence spectre.

> It becomes "fastest animal" race for the door (or mountaintop fortress or whatever).

As a planet, we are at that point already, we have been at it for at least a decade or longer when people started migrating inside of Africa and then towards Europe as droughts made farming and survival fiendishly difficult to outright impossible.

And our politicians have already begun preparing for the real escalation of the climate wars - the US have built a massive border wall in the South and are quite okay with dumping water left behind in the desert [1] and other atrocities, and here in Europe Frontex has been engaging in illegal pushbacks and criminalization of sea rescue for years as well [2]. We are normalizing atrocities to keep the Western countries clean from the consequences of mostly our own CO2 emissions.

> Simple efficiency is a real solution given actual implementation. Do not throw out goodwill and stability with this political violence spectre.

There is no goodwill left in US politics, not on the Republican side at least. Europe has the goodwill, but unfortunately a lot of decisions require unanimous consent and China particularly has used the 2008ff financial crisis to strategically take over critical assets and countries, not to mention the historic links Russia has to major German and Italian parties. As I detailed below, I see it highly likely that a frustrated populace - either from the left or the right wing, but I believe that the far-right will be more effective - will resort to massive social unrest like in France with the Yellow Vests.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/01/2...

[2] https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/frontex-scandal-...

this kind of foaming-at-the-mouth list of problems is exactly what pushes real solutions away, and precipitates crisis thinking. A border wall at Mexico is the sign of the Apocalypse Now ? check your mania, please.

I have a picture saved from a US Congressional hearing in the first US "oil shock" of the 1970s. Large, real fiscal policy was put to the test and people were definitely upset. The four economists at the table made history because they used quantitative methods to find leverage points in an apparently intractable situation. They resisted "crisis thinking" and instead took the hard road of analytics, and made real improvement. Both from a policy point of view, but importantly the crisis of "what can we do" in the minds of many.

Poverty for very many isn't around the corner. It's already here.

"In April 2022, the average monthly SocSec benefit for retired workers was $1,666.49" ... about 20,000/year. (CNBC)

"The poverty level for a household of two in 2022" is about $18,000.

So already the SS-only retired (guess what percentage that is) were already very near the poverty-line. $1500 a month rent, $1660 income? Oh, but "In 2022, Medicare Part B premiums ... increased ... from $148.50 to $170.10 ... the largest... increase in the program's history..."

Those numbers came from before this year's inflation. I've been hidden away from Covid two years, and only recently got a look around. It's a different world out there for consumers... multiple asking prices astonished me. Going by Reddit remarks, a majority of us are already 'cutting our life style' (something Target has also noticed lately).

FIVE years from now? Who dares think about it?

Isn't that basically what Macron tried to do which lead to all the Yellow Vest protests and riots?

I agree in principle but there needs to be some sort of tuning so people living in the poor countryside with no public transportation get time to adjust.

Macron also removed "impôt de solidarité sur la fortune", which suggests you have to be actively trying to shift the tax burden to poor people for a carbon tax to go wrong.

> "The movement is predominantly against a tax system perceived as unfair and unjust, but there are numerous grievances and differences of opinion. Most want to scrap the fuel taxes, hold a review of the tax system, raise the minimum wage and roll back Macron’s tax cuts for the wealthy and his pro-business economic programme. But some also want parliament dissolved and Macron to resign."

But strangely, the media focused on "carbon taxes bad" not "low minimum wage, regressive taxes bad".

It's like the only measure to 'help' the poor that has wide acceptance is to give them money to buy fossil fuels.

Call it what it is, a bribe to make people complacent.

You missed the point that even if we cut emissions to zero, we will not hit our climate goals. We need to remove CO2 and the constant focus on low value efforts like electrifying cars by 2030-40 will end up creating more harm than if we allocate some of those resources to other strategies.

This video shows one such strategy and the channel creator looks to cover many such emerging technologies. We will need a many strategy approach and to understand that we will never get everyone (or every country) on the same page about these strategies and even the need for such focus on climate.

I don't think I missed the point. I was replying to the parent comment.

And as I wrote a carbon tax on raw fossil fuel would also be a great way to fund such carbon removal projects.

Fossil fuel usage is only one such source, agriculture is a significant component as well, as is concrete

True, ideally we incentivize elimination of all carbon emissions.

Still, even for concrete production close to half the emission is due to fuel burning, so taxing fossil fuel would have a large impact as it is easy to measure and implement. (You have comparatively few producers).

For chemical reactions related emissions (other than burning carbon), it might be easier to simply mandate carbon capture system by law for those industries.

> ideally we incentivize elimination of all carbon emissions.

I don't think such an absolute goal makes sense. What we want is to be at balance long term and pull out enough CO2 to not destroy our current ecosystem any further. I think if we were actually facing the opposite, we'd find ways to ensure we don't go back into an ice age.

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