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Comment by jjjjj55555 | Hacker News Reader

I've been hearing for over a decade that carbon taxes are the solution. I've also been hearing that Republicans are standing in the way of this solution.

What I've never heard is an explanation of why some sensible, well-run scandinavian country hasn't already implemented this and brought their emissions down to zero.

If there are simple solutions to this problem then why hasn't some country already implemented them?

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Sweden has had a carbon tax since 1991 and has almost halved co2 emissions since.

Sources:

https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/sweden

https://government.se/government-policy/swedens-carbon-tax/s...

The US has dropped them 25% over the same time period, so Sweden has done 25 percentage points better. That's less than a 1% compounded drop for those 35 years, and that's assuming that all of the delta was attributable to carbon taxes. That's not a very convincing case.

It is not simple. Carbon tax is useless without carbon tariffs, which have high political costs. Not to mention without any kind of carbon dividends the whole scheme would be extremely unpopular.

So everyone is just pushing half solutions and talking a lot. Politicians will never go for hard solutions, especially when everyone is satisfied by talking about magic pills like "green deal", "more renewables" or (from current top comment) "climate advocacy" and "citizen engagement".

People just love talking. And feeling good about it.

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