Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

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IMO, the only reasoanble way to deal with the carbon issue is a small "sin" tax at the point where fuel is mined / imported. There are still a few corner cases, but they represent such a minute fraction of output that they are ignorable. The advantage is automacticaly account for output on everyproduct and stage of production without atempting to calculate what it's carbon history is. [You mined/imported 10 million tuns of carbon x, which you can collect from the person you sold it to and on down the chain. They can ignore the tax as it's just an increase in fuel costs to be passed to the customer.]

I also suspect the impact would on coal would be much larger than that on gas. Which is a great thing because coal is far more replaceable than gas at this point in time. You can then subsidize non carbon energy production / carbon storage equaly and let the market deside what's most effecent. You can also ignore hybrids as the government focusing on a specific solution is less effecent over time.

I heard Jeffrey Sachs saying the same thing you say: tax at the point of mining, not at the point of emission. He then went on to explain that the current focus on emissions comes from the fact that some laws or proposals regarding CO2 (carbon credits) were, without much reflection, copied from corresponding regulations about sulfur, and for sulfur you are stuck with emissions because you don't mine sulfur.

I commend you for your honesty.

It will be a TAX on every energy consumer in the world (since energy is used to produce all items including those that are exported).

It won't actually DO anything to fix the environment, just fill government coffers; the money will be use to fly VIPs around to environmental confabs on private jets.

> "It will be a TAX on every energy consumer in the world ... It won't actually DO anything to fix the environment"

Actually, it will. The use of taxes to influence consumption is well-documented. It's basic economics: price increases, demand decreases (because demand is not completely inelastic). As less products are made, less resources will be used, which helps the environment.

You don't believe that a tax on certain types of energy will incentivize various industries and processes to consume less of that energy?

"TAX on every energy consumer" (FALSE).

Not all forms of energy invovle extracting a stable form of carbon from the earth.

Nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, all provide electricity and the "carbon tax" need only apply to energy sources that are a net carbon gain. The tipping point between wind and coal is really close so a tiny subsady over several years could replace all coal power plants with wind farms over time (think 40+ years).

You might suggest that effing with electricity production is a bad idea but there are huge discrepency's between the cost of electricity around the county and it does not have much impact.

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