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Comment by shortsunblack | Hacker News Reader

Americans also consume way more per capita than Europeans. For future trade deal deliberations, EU must demand US pay for its pollution. Carbon credits, but not for goods, but individuals. Tax the carbon of imports, too.

It's astonishing how much impunity US gets on not doing anything of value in regards to the Climate crisis. China leads in solar rollout, China leads in EVs. China leads in HSR. EU leads in building codes/insulation/heat pump adoption (you can't import most of the heat pumps into US because uhh scary refrigerant is being used!).

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>EU must demand US pay for its pollution. Carbon credits, but not for goods, but individuals. Tax the carbon of imports, too.

I get the justification for a carbon border tax is to equalize the cost difference between a country that has a carbon tax vs one that doesn't, so manufacturers from the country with carbon tax isn't disadvantaged, but what's the justification for enacting taxes just because the country's citizens are polluting? Is it just a "we don't like what you're doing" tax?

Because pollution is of global consequence?

You can make the same argument for any other geopolitical reason, eg. "American imperialism" or whatever

Begging the question. Obviously, some geopolitical issues are subject to trade agreements and legislation.

While "American Imperialism" is an intangible concept, pollution very much is not. What can and cannot be made for an argument depends mostly on economic/geopolitical leverage, not faulty categorical thinking.

With less adversarial framing, you could think of it as finding common ground for an intermingled future.

>Begging the question.

Explain? Countries invoking "American Imperialism" isn't exactly an unheard of concept. The point isn't whether "American Imperialism" or "pollution" is objectively true, it's whether other countries would invoke those reasons to set up retaliatory tariffs.

>While "American Imperialism" is an intangible concept, pollution very much is not

How about something more concrete like "EU/NATO enlargement", "Chinese spying", or "tech giants (who are mostly American) spreading misinformation"?

>With less adversarial framing, you could think of it as finding common ground for an intermingled future.

That's a nice thing to hope for, but isn't the world we live in. Countries who have the tariffs applied to them aren't going to interpret them as "common ground for an intermingled future", they're going to think it's the opening shot of a trade war.

That's not going to work, because USA is exporting very little while EU is exporting quite a lot, so you would make EU exports not competitive and replaced by cheaper alternative.

China also leads in coal, oil and gas.

As they can. It is still largely a developing country with half the population in poverty. If we are to take United States' historic emissions and equalize it to per capita, China can pollute at current rate till death of universe. This inconsequential of an argument you are making. Green colonialism is not desirable.

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