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Comment by Toutouxc | Hacker News Reader

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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