Hacker News Reader

Comment by snehk | Hacker News Reader

Welp. Time for a conference we all fly to using private jets to tell the plebs how it's their doing that's destroying the planet. Maybe agree on a tax or something that screws over the little guy while having absolutely no effect on the global climate.

View on HN

A tax on CO2 producers that is redistributed as basic income, helping the smallest guy the most, would be a gradual force to shift to cleaner energy, since the seismic shift that is required cleary is not favored by anyone.

Since the people who decide this got into their positions with support from the only group who would lose from this in the short term, we can be sure that it'll never happen.

While I approve of UBI and environmental protection, I don't think it's going to help either cause to mix them together like that.

Any tax in America would be completely pointless if there's nothing that limits, China, and India, as the world's largest polluters. Anything the West does is just a drop in the bucket, unless those two countries follow.

It's a very large drop.

33% of global carbon emissions are from the west 18% from the united states A significant share of chinese emmissions is driven by western consumerism as well and could be reduced.

Even a 10% reduction of the overall share driven purely by the west would amount to a lot more than a drop. Even more if coupled with a proper incentive system for other countries to follow

"completely pointless"?

Exactly. People forget that all the environmental damage coming from China and other sweatshop countries, comes from manufacturing stuff on the cheap to feed western consumerism, and those corners cut to achieve such low prices are not just on labor but also on lack of environmental protection.

There's a reason semiconductors are no longer manufactured in 'Silicon Valley' who's soil is still full of forever chemicals, but mostly all moved to Asia where there's a lot less concern for the local environment as long as billions are flowing in the country.

https://theconversation.com/how-silicon-valley-industry-poll...

You missed the part about a tax in America. Just because America does something doesn't mean the rest of the world is going to follow. Introducing a tax on carbon emissions will only harm America, while other parts of the world continue to pollute. It's still results in no benefit. And that's very naïve to think that it's western consumerism, when there's plenty of consumerism in Asia and Europe. This American centric focus is so very naïve.

Europe is part of "western"

US is a much worse polluter than India. All of us have to get our shit together before waiting for others.

This will never happen, because it could help too many of those who need it the most.

That "Klimageld" is actually planned in Germany by the current Government. It should already have been implemented but different forms of inability to implement have it delayed by a lot.

Do you have a source to support your claim that a carbon tax, which is generally seen as an efficient way to reduce carbon emissions, would have no effect on the global climate and screw over the little guy?

I ask as a renter who doesn't own a car and would love to stop paying for other people's fancy electric SUV's and house retrofits that costs tens of thousands of Euro.

He didn't say carbon tax. You've propped up quite the strawman here.

A flat per gram CO2 tax would be a great idea, but universal international cooperation is required and this would hurt less developed countries a LOT.

At this point lots of warming is inevitable regardless of what (peaceful) things the US and EU do. Africa will get four billion people this century and they want things.

Africa can skip a lot of our mistakes.

PV is cheap, and for places that don't yet have a reliable grid connection, batteries may be cheaper than building a grid (or stabilising it if they have one that's unstable).

Yup, the same way they skipped landline phones and started with smartphones right away.

They probably won't skip ICE car ownership and dirty industry revolving around mining and manufacturing cheap stuff for the 'green' west.

No, currently they don't. All the old cars not fit for europe anymore, just get send to africa.

But if the west would be serious about climate change and developement aid, there would be huge opportunities to do things different.

I've only visited one place in Africa (Nairobi) an only once (about a decade ago); the cars I saw were all in poor condition and about 20-30 years old when I saw them.

Also one of the people we visited had an income so low their annual rent was equivalent to about US$1k, so consider how old and decrepit a vehicle has to be on a western market to be in her price range.

There's a huge variation of culture and living standards across the continent, from people much richer than that who buy new cars that are expensive by western standards to people who walk miles to get water from a well because there isn't any plumbing.

PV and storage have the advantage of being scalable down to small cheap things that even the poorest can benefit from. Cars, not so much, so for low priced transportation, think instead about e-bicycles and e-motorbikes, and even manual bicycles. Or public transport (but even then, the crowded matatu I was in for one trip looked old).

Sure, but it will still be significantly worse if the US and the EU do nothing.

Compensatory tariffs on trade coming/going into regions that don't implement it.

> Africa will get four billion people this century and they want things.

That's simply a stronger and stronger argument to make sure they get help and incentives to do it with minimal GHG emissions.

Which "tax or something" screws over the little guy while having absolutely no effect on the global climate?

Most taxes on motorists outside of large towns/cities (where there's no viable alternative to cars).

Of course, climate catastrophists want everyone living in pods in dystopian mega-cities as the solution for this.

Ok, 'get in the pods' may be a silly meme, but living a tiny but ludicrously expensive city centre apartment and working from home on a screen (or in a future metaverse) all day, getting most things delivered and rarely needing to go outside, it's getting pretty close.

The only reason cars are viable "outside large towns/cities" is because the large cities are subsidizing road construction in rural areas.

Those rural area voters, in turn, elect politicians who scream blue bloody murder about how high taxes are, and refuse to vote for funding for public transportation...something that would benefit the cities generating the wealth the rural areas.

Isn't it wild how the "fiscal conservatives" always come from states that consume far more federal spending than they contribute in federal tax revenue?

Further, we over-paved rural areas in the name of "progress" - dirt roads are much, much cheaper but people hate them because they think it's a sign of being poor.

Large cities couldn't exist without rural areas and their food production.

A very small percentage of people living in rural areas are actually in food production.

Would you want to remove all unnecessary humans from rural areas just to get rid of cars?

Completely shut down tourism to areas of natural beauty and other recreational outdoors activities too far away from the prison-city?

Except for the elite who of course get to keep their private jets and superyachts...

I'm simply stating the fact that just because food production happens outside of cities doesn't mean that most people in rural areas live there for that particular reason. It's a very common counter-argument, that cities need the countryside for food production. Which is true. But cities don't need the vast majority of people living in rural areas for food production, because they have nothing to do with food production in the first place. So it's a bad argument.

As to the other strawman arguments, it's besides my original point, but no I don't think we should forcefully move anyone. But it's just a simple fact that rural living and suburbia are heavily subsidized by the economic engines that are cities. And, accounting for economic production, cities have a much smaller environmental impact per capita.

> Except for the elite who of course get to keep their private jets and superyachts...

Judging by your comments, you seem to be of the opinion that environmentalists mostly love rich people and want to exempt them from climate taxes while allowing them to continue enjoying luxuries that produce as much carbon as dozens of middle class lifestyles.

I have to say that in my experience with environmentalists, nothing could be further from the truth. They are, largely, middle class to poor (in U.S. terms) themselves, and overwhelmingly blame consumption by the rich and corporate practices encouraged by externalized costs under our present economic system.

That's not to say that there aren't some activists and scientists who fly to conferences. But they tend to be more aware of this conflict than you might think. Some scientists, for example, refuse to fly. And there is some credibility to the idea that the work they are doing is vital, whereas luxury vacations clearly are not.

I live in a rural area. Most of what they grow here is soybeans, corn and tobacco. You cant' eat any of it. It's a common misconception that rural areas are food producing. The U.S. imports something like 40% of it's produce.

At this point, isn’t tax basically for those who can’t afford to "optimize fiscal plans" to zero, only letting a few pennies for PR matters along the "philanthropic non-profit" foundation?

Merely an observation: no tax thus far exacted by any government anywhere has had any measurable effect on the global climate, again, thus far. Taxes relating to emissions and the like relate to emissions etc., not global climate metrics. They have had a beneficial effect on atmospheric pollutants like sulfur dioxide, fluorocarbons and many others.

If the emissions (of CO2, etc) have an impact on global climate doesn't that mean a measurable effect on emissions has an impact on global climate? If you have doubts about emissions impacting climate say that, but that's another discussion.

There are many things not directly measurable which have an impact. Example: when learning a new programming language reading one paragraph of a tutorial does not have a measurable effect on you knowing the language - for most paragraphs. But if you read zero paragraphs you might not know anything.

Banning plastic bags at grocery store checkouts. But still allowing the store to sell their plastic kitchen garbage bags, and policy to only pickup recycling if it’s in a clear plastic bag instead of the old reusable blue bins.

And everything I buy from the store is encased in plastic (bananas! eggs! bread!).

Plastic is probably the single greatest threat to our environment right now. Solve the plastic problem, and CO2, and other forms of carbon based pollution will come down.

> “Banning plastic bags at grocery store checkouts. But still allowing the store to sell their plastic kitchen garbage bags…”

The ban should have economic effects somewhere in the supply chain. One hopes the economic data will help policymakers understand the effects of eliminating those kitchen garbage bags, and then craft the arguments that influence people to change their behavior—-in other words a move was made. Now we need the data.

Let us do not forget about plastic straws. Let's ban plastic straws.

Oh, I thought that was already the case everywhere as I live in France and basically didn’t travel much over the last years.

The trend is probably too slow but it’s there: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/plastic-bans-around...

Yeah, I was referring to this past move of EU as being particularly effective one to combat plastic pollution. EDIT: But you are right, banning single-use plastic bags is a first step. Let's keep walking.

Haha, Funny, I live in the Falklands and plastic bags along with plastic straws have been banned. But you can walk along the coast line and most of the time, the pollution there is all plastic coming from the fishing industry... Yet, no one is saying nothing about that, since the economy is driven by the fishing industry...

Not long ago I had a few scientist friends working for an "NGO", and it was so crazy to see mugs and other swag from oil companies over at their HQ...

Exactly my point. Systemic thinking and action at its best.

It's also time to greenwash some money to warm up our image.... I mean... it's time to invest in some corporations that promise to fix climate through elaborate yet ineffective means.

... or if that not helps maybe it is time to destroy some more Van Gogh paintings or something.

>... or if that not helps maybe it is time to destroy some more Van Gogh paintings or something.

I wish that this kind of symbolic transgression could really be the most tragic consequences of the situation.

I could come with a digression of my own, but probably you’ll be better serve with a document like https://phys.org/news/2021-10-climate-contributes-global-vio...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com