[bendavis381]

Not just that. Companies should have to pay for their emissions. Like how we have to pay local government to take our garbage, companies should have to pay to pollute the planet. It's insane that Starbucks et al can produce as much waste as they want without any requirement to pay for the damage.

[ip26]

And the reason that makes sense is it isn't just about "punish the evil corporations!". If the emissions had a price, the price of the product would reflect that.

[codeulike]

Good luck getting the oil industry to pay for their externalities

[jakewins]

This is already happening with the EU cap-n-trade scheme. Because it was designed to ratchet, it initially had nearly no effect - but in two years quotas will have dropped 21% from the ones set in 2005; by 2030 they will force CO2-equivalent emissions down 43%.

Companies that emit CO2-equivalent emissions now will either need to retool to lower emissions, or they need to buy emissions certificates from other companies that have retooled.

The end result is much simpler than introducing additional labeling of products for consumers to interpret. Instead, the externalities are removed and prices signal the total cost of production, as they should.

https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en

[harryh]

The challenge isn't the oil industry, it's regular people. A carbon tax would just make gas more expensive and people don't want that. Keep in mind that in order to be effective we're not talking about "people just pay more," we're talking about "the price is so much higher, people buy a lot less gas."

[bendavis381]

I would rephrase it as "the price is so much higher, suppliers are forced to develop alternative products to satisfy demand". Energy suppliers have been given massive subsidies for decades because they don't have to factor in the negative externalities. A carbon cost should be a part of the balance sheet in the way raw materials are. Given that, suppliers will have to innovate their way to bring price back down to equilibrium, or go out of business.

[whatshisface]

Option one: build solar panels. Option two: poor people no longer drive, and their standard of living falls. Capitalism, if given a pricing signal to "reduce emissions," will pick a completely merciless combination of the two.

[jnurmine]

Option three: improve mass transit, to move more people per fuel unit.

Option four: reduce need to drive around by bringing services closer to people and promoting remote working etc.

Option five: remove need to drive for shopping and such by creating "bus for stuff", you order things and get them delivered (near) home.

Option six: convert existing vehicles to electric (probably needs some form of battery innovation and might not be cheap even if price is offset by the raw metals salvaged from the engine).

Just a few examples of the obvious options. The truly clever smart options take more analysis (and a smarter mind than mine) to figure out.

The point: the search space for "reduce emissions (driving) because price of gas is insane" is very large, going full solar or poor don't drive are not really the only options.

[umanwizard]

Well, good. Our collective standard of living needs to fall in order for the planet to survive.

If you don’t want it to hit poor people specifically you can subsidize the tax for them.

[whatshisface]

Well, there's always option three: keep things going and pray for a technical miracle. That's the default choice and probably the road we're on.

[sdornan]

How about a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend in which households receive the fees that are levied on polluters? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee_and_dividend

[tomjen3]

That won't work.

Imagine a collection of average households, not much different from one another. Each household could spend 10 thousand dollars improving insulation, and with the cap and div scheme it would be paid back in 5 years. After 5 years you are net ahead, so that seems reasonable, right?

Except that with the improvements the money they make back is now less, because the total amount of money that gets paid into the cap-and-div is less, so they have essentially lost money, even though the system is supposed to the revenue neutral.

Granted in the real world it would be more complicated because not every household is the same, but the system would still not give us a free lunch.

[NeedMoreTea]

This has happened.

The UK had an escalating fuel tax in the late 90s, early 00s. At some point when petrol was around 99p a litre there were demonstrations and rolling go-slows on motorways. I think the demos may have also blockaded refineries. Stupidly, government caved and the escalator tax was neutered. Now fuel is around £1.30 a litre.

It was subtle at first, but by the time of the demos there was a noticeable effect on the roads. For the first time in living memory (mine anyway) they were getting quieter. Most people in my circle didn't seem that fussed by it, they just drove a bit less.

No idea if there was "someone" like an oil company was behind the initial idea of or organising of the demos.

[tw04]

Which has already happened once in recent history. People seem to have short memories. When gas hit $4 per gallon back during the Bush era, it had a very real effect both on the types of cars people were buying as well as the amount they were willing to travel

[Max_aaa]

The whole point is force people to pay the actual price for the good (services) they are getting.

This will force people to abandon extremely polluting habits out of economic necessity.

[mattferderer]

I can't see any politician (at least in the majority party) going for this due to the initial impact it would have on the economy by driving prices up significantly on everything.

Maybe if a very left-wing Democratic party was the majority & the Republicans were in the minority this could work. Huge incentive for those that care enough about global pollution to make it more important than the economy. That seems to be the Democrats at this time. I'm not even sure if 100% of them would get behind it.

Since most of the Republican party doesn't take climate change as serious as their Democrats, they could get behind it by knowing the economy would suffer for a while & they could use it as political ammo.

Would be curious to hear if anyone thinks this could work politically, especially truly independent minds in-tuned to "both sides".

[ams6110]

Starbuck pays to have their trash picked up. And the more trash they generate, the more they pay.

Granted, maybe they should pay more, but they can't literally produce as much waste as they want and pay nothing.