California to require firms to reveal carbon emissions in first law of its kind
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Why Are Governments Still Subsidizing Fossil Fuels?https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-16/climat...
Ethanol subsidies and 40 million acres wasted just in US.
stop with all the bozo virtue signaling
How about stop with all the well-poisoning and the cheap shots, and make your point in a more adult fashion.
Asking corporations to track their supply chain for their carbon usage is a complete waste of time. All the information a firm needs is already reflected in the price of its goods/services.
This is why economists are in near universal agreement that a carbon tax is the optimal policy. It’s dead simple to implement as it only requires tracking the sales of producers.
> By 2026, those companies will have to publicly disclose how much carbon is produced by their operations and electricity use.
Basically this puts a reporting burden on everyone instead of the place where the carbon is sourced - probably an oil or gas company.
This is a very good point, you should have stopped here instead of devolving into a purity spiral by attacking somebody who's obviously coming from a similar point of view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purity_spiral
The entire premise of Pigouvian taxes is that they force consumers to pay the external cost, not let them optionally avoid them. This leads to substitution effects lowering consumption of the pollutant.
All market participants must be subject to that price or you introduce arbitrage opportunity.
Information alone is not enough.
All it really does is make things more expensive though. You can say that such things are funding social services, but, realistically, all of government is funded by an unfathomable amount of debt, so raising taxes, or creating new taxes, isn't likely to change much of anything outside of increasing how much debt is available.
Carbon taxes (Pigouvian taxes) are a solution to the problem of pricing externalities by incentivizing alternatives. The tax creates a wedge where consumers choose alternatives.
Incentives matter and produce better outcomes by changing behavior.
With the right signal, by 2035 BEV will be cheaper than ICE. This of course assumes we don’t let the Sierra Club prevent us from mining lithium to protect some random beetle in the desert.
We're talking about CA here. A single, albeit large, US state. As we see from emissions moving from the west to China, if CA imposes a tax then carbon emissions will just move somewhere else. The absence of a carbon tax in one US state likely has little effect on AGW. I would argue that interfering with market based production location may cause even more emissions as shipping costs may increase.
It actually helps them: They can import cheap goods from elsewhere and barely notice the cost.
I've noticed this in NYC - things are just so cheap relative to income that people don't care at all about items, they are very wasteful relative to other places I've been, and they kind of have to be, because they don't have much storage space. "Buy it, use it, toss it, buy it again when you need it." In contrast in places with more space (and lower income) people tend to store things for reuse.
But California is one of the largest and most advanced economies in the world. The same is true of Germany, which has been getting the California treatment recently. And both are currently performing very well given the global context (inflation, energy) and have proven tremendously robust historically, which makes these constant declarations of doom and gloom especially suspicious to me.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/germany-economy-energy-crisis-rus...
Cleaner, more equitable future awaits.
1, https://ajed.assembly.ca.gov/content/california-economy-2
2, https://www.api.org/news-policy-and-issues/news/2021/07/20/c...
Texas gets 8.5% of its energy from renewables. California gets 16.5%. (The state with the most from renewables is Washington with 50%, followed by South Dakota at 43%, and Maine at 38%).
For electricity the US average is 39% from renewables. Texas is a little below average at 33%. California is at 49%. (Highest is Vermont at 99+%, South Dakota at 83%, and Washington at 82%).
In terms of CO2 Mt/TWh the US average is 402. Texas is 428. California is 229. (The best are Vermont at 5, Washington at 100, Oregon at 143, and South Dakota at 145).
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electri...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electri...
for me, this is a non-partisan observation
population wise, the republican party simply does not have the numbers to do the same. there are very few deeply red or blue counties, but uniquely the deeply red ones are sparsely populated. so most red counties can be swung with a tiny population change to push over 50%, or can be swung by a tiny population moving there.
I made the model because I was surprised some super pac or some other well funded interest group didn't already do a relocation program like this
I’ll contract it out to super pacs and campaigns, and those interested. I did it in 2022 and it was too late for the midterms but its time now for the national elections
So yes. You will flip the whole country.
i.e. you neglected second order effects.
I think it is very interesting to wonder how effective this would be
there are many circumstances where it becomes more apparent that a party isnt representing interests relevant to that area once someone is there, especially since some places would require residency for 7-8 months before being eligible to vote there
I don't care about the outcome, I navigate a lot of countries, but I’ll sell things to partisans, they’re very emotional and deeply invested in the outcome
Or blue-no-matter-who Democrats move to a rural area and then change their beliefs?
I suspect it's more the former than the latter (you move after your beliefs change more than before).
What could go wrong?
Can I start by asking you what type of Socialism you are most concerned with?
Socialism is a very broad term with different meanings to different people.
For example, I am a Socialist who is against autocratic rule. I believe the Soviet style communists (the countries you mentioned) weren't much better than other contemporary autocrats and in many cases were far worse. There are other Socialists who believe that any hierarchy is bad and should be removed. It's a very diverse community of people from a wide variety of backgrounds and a wide variety of beliefs, only a small minority of which believe in totalitarian or single party rule.
I support, for example, democratic workers councils, federation of guilds, and other such elective methods of leadership. I just happen to also believe that labor entitles you to a share of the profit of that labor, rather than investment wealth. I'd love to live in a world where every company was a workers-coop, and we reduced our profit motive and increased our work comfort motive.
This is a great question, and a common misunderstanding! First, in case there's some confusion by other readers, I'm against private property controlling and directing labor, but not personal property -- that is to say that no one is going to take your xbox or Ford truck away from you. Those things are personal property, they are yours and should stay yours.
I do think, however, that private property -- the money used to exert control over others ("I'm the chief investor in X, so you must do what I say") -- should be replaced with cooperative ownership. Either through labor ownership, labor-customer ownership, or the state, as appropriate.
But, how do we achieve that? Yes, you could seize all the assets via force. But that's bad. Instead, you structure your incentives so it happens over time. Decrease the costs of running a co-op, reducing taxes or fees for businesses that are collectively owned. Increase taxes and fees proportional to the differences between the compensation of the highest paid individual and the lowest. Increase estate taxes, so no one immediately loses their money, but less capital passes down (obviously with gradients so as not to hurt most people). Expand property taxes to include other property at some nominal rate.
The other thing you could do is make it as easy to do the co-operative thing as it is to do the solo thing. Finding a lender to talk about cohousing is MUCH more difficult than finding one to talk about a mortgage. Finding a lawyer who can incorporate a co-op is much harder than finding out how to start an LLC. We would move significantly towards my ideals over time if the education and resources allocated were even close to parity.
It doesn't have to be a revolution and it doesn't have to be without the rule of law or anti-democratic.
I'll keep extending that olive branch, quietly but assertively offering to discuss, answering questions. If it fails 99 times but succeeds once, that's one more person in the world who stops thinking in such rigid black and white about in-group vs out-group.
I hear this frequently, but I do not believe it is axiomatic. I believe we should provide a sense of equal minimum reward, a baseline level of food, shelter, amenities that everyone gets access to. Even if they cannot work or choose to work the minimum amount.
Again, it's important to recall that "Socialism" includes everything from Soviets to Anarchists to Democratic Socialists and many (many) flavors in between.
But it's not fundamentally antithetical to Socialism to recognize the people who choose to work more. The rewards structure might look different, depending on what flavor of Socialism you prefer, but I would expect that someone who goes above and beyond also tends to attract rewards (whether those are luxuries, time, recognition, or other things).
Even my anarchist/socialist friends would recognize that many luxuries are limited -- we cannot all have infinite bottles of aged whiskey -- but if you put in the extra time to really help out at the distillery, or really devote a lot of time to making their barrels, it stands to reason you'd be recognized for that.
I also genuinely believe that when you remove the necessity of "I need to work an excess to ensure I can afford to support my family's basic needs", the desire to work more comes from a passion for the work or for securing 'nice to haves'. There's nothing saying a worker's co-op couldn't decide to, for instance, nominate 10% of their peers each month for extra rewards or something.
Fair point, and I think there are definitely enough resources to support people with disabilities or incapable of working for other extreme reasons. I guess the main discussion would be around where exactly to draw the line such that we're not forcing people to pay for those that choose to not work.
>I also genuinely believe that when you remove the necessity of "I need to work an excess to ensure I can afford to support my family's basic needs"
It depends on how we define "excess work". Unfortunately some people's excess work is another person's daily morning routine. If the productive person is not fairly rewarded, they will stop trying or even worse try something illegal or immoral. I think there are still a number of creative solutions to try, things like facilitating sponsorships for people of all ages to learn new skills, or investing in a public "linkedin" of sorts that is free and uses AI to match people with jobs. There are many creative and cheap things to try, and artificially imposing a certain "living wage" which constantly changes isn't addressing the root of the problem, which is that many people don't understand how to leverage the job market, their skills, etc.
Not everyone will do this, but some folks are just wired to want to help in that way. The thing is that we don't have a financial incentive to do that today -- you must optimize your factory ruthlessly for production efficiency rather than for comfort.
I believe that rewards for excess work are similar -- some of us cannot put the work down, we enjoy doing it. I think those cases will largely fall into one of a few buckets:
1) Some folks will just do extra work and not be bothered that they are doing more. (I tend to fall into this bucket -- my needs are met, I do it because I derive value in the labor)
2) Some folks will divert their excess labor from production to a hobby, art, or other projects (like the factory comfort). It might not mean more widgets, but maybe we have enough widgets. If you make everyone around you happier, rewards will find you.
3) Some folks will want more luxuries, and we'll have to figure out if and how to allocate those things. Not everyone can work excess. If I lost a hand due to a workplace accident, but I'm otherwise eager to work, do I deserve less than someone who is equally eager but able bodied? I believe many Capitalists would say yes, but many Socialists would say no.
4) We'll have to recognize work that isn't considered 'work' today. Parenting, for instance, requires an immense amount of labor. Laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, elder care, etc. Maybe we encourage productive folks to spend their excess time looking for ways to make that work easier.
5) Some folks aren't going to be happy. They are going to feel under-rewarded for their labor. Hopefully this is offset by generally higher wages/standard of living for most. (If we're not paying billions of dollars to CEOs, that's billions in the pockets of individual workers).
6) Some folks work excess today and see no increase in comp -- it's already a problem for salaried workers, even within Capitalism. I can work 40 hours or 60 hours, but my pay is the same either way. I might get a notional bonus of a few grand a year, I might get an earlier promotion. But those things certainly aren't guaranteed.
> we're not forcing people to pay for those that choose to not work.
What is work is a very, very important question. If someone is a stay at home parent, cooking and cleaning, is that work? If someone is a musician, but isn't a particularly great one, is that work? If I sit in the park and tell stories and people enjoy listening to me and I have a regular audience, is that work? If I'm an elder and mostly enjoy spending my remaining years with my loved ones, is that work?
Yes, we must have some level of productivity, obviously, in order to survive. I strongly suspect that if you gave people basic needs, nearly everyone would chip in some labor, but we'd also probably need to decide on some mechanism for "who performs sanitation if we do not get enough volunteers?" Today that mechanism is "you gotta eat, so you gotta work wage labor", but we could absolutely replace that with "least popular labor gets bonus luxuries" or "we all take turns, once a year you gotta collect trash".
> 1) Some folks will just do extra work and not be bothered that they are doing more
I doubt this for most people. This is basically saying that right now a lot of people are ok with a pay cut (same work, less pay = free extra work). I can see a lot of people doing #2, which is equivalent to not working. And as mentioned before, these people are not working yet still somehow rewarded for it.
#5 and #6 are true, and is why if everyone gets a living wage regardless of whether they work or not, the people who currently don't enjoy doing what they do would simply stop doing it. Maybe everyone would become some kind of artist, while machines keep the economy running, but that is a utopia that requires many technological breakthroughs, i.e. advanced AI, unlimited renewable energy, better batteries, etc... and we're not getting there without Capitalism, which is somewhat ironic.
> but we'd also probably need to decide on some mechanism for "who performs sanitation if we do not get enough volunteers?" Today that mechanism is "you gotta eat, so you gotta work wage labor", but we could absolutely replace that with "least popular labor gets bonus luxuries" or "we all take turns, once a year you gotta collect trash".
This is something that the market solves as if it where a large, decentralized computer. Without market incentives there needs to be top-down coordination to incentivize people and this becomes unmanageable and does not scale.
I still feel that there is a problem with markets in how success is exponential for an extreme minority, while seemingly impossible to attain for a large portion at the bottom. I'm not sure what the best approach to solve that is, but we cannot take the wealth markets produce and expect the same output for a system without markets. The wealth we have under markets is not attainable without it, even though some people exponentially get rich from it. While inequality between rich and poor is bad, having everyone be poor because nobody can coordinate their productivity is even worse. Personally, I feel once AI becomes powerful enough, we will be able to do this kinds of complicated coordination that may solve the problem, however that path is a minefield of potential dystopias.
1. Those symptoms you describe seem more general to fascist/totalitarian governments than just socialist governments. Are you saying all socialism is equivalent to totalitarian governments?
2. Do you believe those symptoms are unique and in-masse to socialist governments?
3. Why do you add China to that list when it is widely considered by many diverse institutions to be state capitalist?
This is a very interesting point. The Chinese State itself (and presumably 1.5 billion Chinese people) consider China a Socialist Country. No doubts about it. They call their economy a Socialist Market Economy. You could think of it as capitalist underlying economic structure and total social control of the Socialist State above it. From social perspective it's still totalitarian, which is exactly what socialism is.
It seems to be working for China and, possibly, that's what the majority of the Chinese people want. I am certainly not in business of telling other countries how to live. My only point is that it's not freedom from the liberal democracy perspective.
You mean China today? China today commits more than their fair share of human rights abuses, but the worst atrocities in the PRC were perpetrated in the past by staunch socialists, not those capitalist reformers who later introduced capitalist elements back into Chinese society. During the Cultural Revolution the Red Guard, a hard-line socialist paramilitary mostly comprised of students, were purging anything that vaguely resembled capitalism or tradition. They murdered millions of people for socialism.
For example:
https://www.kcra.com/amp/article/gavin-newsom-china-october-...
Gavin Newsome is traveling to China in October for a climate change effort:
Will he be flying? If so economy, business, first, or private?
What is the total carbon emissions of the travel to China?
How many staff will he be taking with him?
How many family members will he be taking with him?
Where will he be staying?
What will be the carbon emissions associated with his hotel stay?
How many lobyists and NGO personnel will he meet with?
What is the carbon emissions for their travel and hotel stays?