[FrojoS]

Slightly tangential, but I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the political way forward for big countries:

1. Have a single CO2 budget for the whole country, with an aggressive, Hard to change roadmap of yearly reduction of said budget down to zero in the not too long future.

2. Estimate the CO2 footprint of every single product, incl. imports by one or several neutral organizations. This doesn’t have to be perfect as long as it attempts to be fair.

3. Tax every product according to this budget using supply/demand markets (certificates trading).

4. Redistribute the tax, especially to mitigate the hardship on low income households and domestic companies.

In my mind, this would create a gigantic incentive for CO2 reduction for your citizens as well as domestic AND foreign companies. Crucially, it would not require any global agreement and consensus. Apart from perhaps renegotiation or canceling of trade agreements on the side of the country that implements the policy.

Note, that you can replace CO2 by greenhouse gases or environmental impact in general. I just use it as a shorthandle.

Very curious about your opinions.

[ridicter]

There are tons of real world proposals that do this.

Here's one that's in Congress now that you can support: the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (http://energyinnovationact.org) . All revenue from a carbon tax goes to citizens as a yearly check. It has some 30+ cosponsors, including a Republican. A tax at point of source is more efficent than a per-item budget. Any rising cost of CO2 will be accounted for in the price of the product. Fossil-fuel-expensive products will cost more.

The group behind this is the Citizens Climate Lobby, which has been advocating a fee and dividend model for over a decade. It was cofounded by James Hansen, the NASA scientist who first testified to Congress about the perils of climate change over 30 years ago.

In addition, if you live in the states of Oregon and New York, both are on the cusp of passing similar legislation. And there are many more out there in various stages of development...

[FrojoS]

Thank you. I live in Switzerland not the US, so I’m not well informed on US legislation. What about my points 1 and 2? Is the roadmap reliable and aggressive, and are all products incl. imported ones included.

[ridicter]

This sounds very similar to cap and trade, no? Place a cap on total emissions, and decrease that cap over time. Correspondingly, have pollution permits that are allocated according to this cap. Companies that are especially CO2 efficient can sell their extra pollution allowances. Companies that are not can purchase these pollution allowances. As the cap is set lower and lower every year, the pollution allowances become more valuable, raising the price to pollute, or emit CO2. Over time, using fossil fuels becomes more and more prohibitively expensive, until we eventually transition to a near zero carbon society.

[FrojoS]

Exactly. Cap and trade including all industries and imports and with aggressive allowances.

[cschwarm]

I prefer taxes because there's a reliable "shadow of the future". Market prices may go up and down depending on how many certificates are issued, how professional traders behave, and how technology progresses.

So, I'd suggest the following for any nation or country:

1. Create an independent institution (like the European Central Bank) with the goal to get to carbon neutrality until, say, 2040 or 2045.

2. Give it the right to tax carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases. This should include tariffs for imported goods, and reimbursements for exported goods, and other means to make some special industries pay (airplanes and ships, mostly).

3. Give it the right to perform auctions for negative carbon emissions.

If the world wants a chance to fix the problem, it'll need negative emissions, as far as I know. This is missing in your suggestion. It may also be faster to create new industries than change existing ones.

My suggestion would also follow a well-known, although maybe no uncontroversial principle of "polluter pays". In the end, the price is determined by the goal, not by political considerations.

If I'm not mistaken, such a carbon tax would rise until (positive) carbon emissions equal negative carbon emissions. At this point, carbon neutrality should be reached. Whatever else needs to be done is then up to future generations.

[bumby]

I think the difficulty here is getting a consensus on #1.

If it's an international effort, there's going to be disagreement on how to set a budget. Does a country with an emerging economy get a higher budget because they're behind more advanced economies who benefited from fossil fuels in their past growth? Getting advanced economies to make a disproportionate sacrifice will be a hard sell. And what is the accountability/oversight mechanism at the international level?

If instead the budget was set at the national level, you're going to have a hard time getting countries on-board if they see other countries not doing the same. "Why should we hamper our economy when country X isn't making a sacrifice?"

[FrojoS]

Sure. The Citizens need to be very willing to take sacrifices despite other countries not being onboard (yet). But they can if they want to!

In principal this already works in many cases, eg California/US subsidies on electric vehicles or Germany’s subsidies for solar. Both are very expensive with little benefit for the countries citizens compared to all other earthlings. To everyone else. They are just not aggressive enough.

Again, we don’t need an international consensus yet. The interesting part is putting financial pressure on foreign companies to reduce their CO2 footprint.

[bumby]

> But they can if they want to!

Agreed. Most every problem is solvable if there's the will to do it. The problem in this case is that there doesn't seem to be the political/social will to make the changes and sacrifices necessary for this scale.

It's unfortunate, but most people are very present-biased. It's a tough sell to convince them to adopt a forward thinking policy when it causes pain now. Maybe I'm cynical, but if you offered people to vote on whether to double the price of gasoline in order to subsidize renewables because it will be better in the long-run, I doubt that would pass.

[smacktoward]

This approach is called "cap and trade" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading), and the main political problem with it is that most of the people arguing for it turned out to be doing so in bad faith, at least here in the United States.

When there were lots of options for dealing with emissions on the table, including more intrusive ones like carbon taxes and outright emissions restrictions, cap and trade was the favored alternative of conservatives because it was "market-based." When President Obama settled on cap and trade in 2009 in order to get conservatives on board with doing something about climate, though, those same conservatives immediately turned on their heel and started denouncing it as an example of Obama's "socialism."

(Yes, they went from praising a policy as market-based to condemning the same policy as socialist. Such is the sorry state of American political discourse.)

So, the political problem is: if the appeal of cap and trade is that it should theoretically get the support of conservatives who would usually oppose action on climate, but those conservatives will stop supporting it the moment all the other options they like less are taken off the table, is there any point in offering them a cap and trade olive branch in the first place? How do you negotiate with a faction whose only goal for the negotiation is that you have to lose?

[scroot]

Could this result in moving to countries that don't have such policies, thereby allowing for increasing emissions (ie carbon tax havens)

[perfunctory]

Would have to tax imports from those countries as well

[psandersen]

Pricing in externalities are the only good economic argument for tariffs I'm aware of...

Carbon tax + tariffs in proportion to the lack of carbon taxes would be the most logical way of setting up a market-based solution to climate change.

[FrojoS]

Exactly. And sure, some people might move away because of this issue. But unless people start starving a majority won’t leave their homes. They will just revoke the legislation.

[adrianmonk]

I don't particularly like the idea of coupling together one problem (poverty) with another (carbon).

For one thing, it will be a temporary windfall. Then you've got to find ways to replace the revenue when you succeed.

I'd rather see the revenue from a carbon tax go into research, development, and infrastructure that further accelerates the transition to carbon neutral energy.

Obviously, the tax already gives you an incentive to look for other alternatives, but this helps make those other alternatives more practical, so it kind of pushes and pulls you in the right direction.

[mempko]

And of course, this is only a short term policy since we have to get to negative emissions with a budget of zero fast.

[wang_li]

Would be much better to give every citizen their share of the CO2 budget and then require them to spend them as they buy goods and services. This way you don't end up with bureaucrats giving favored, e.g. the company that promised said bureaucrat a huge annual salary post government service, businesses special treatment.

If a person can style their life in a such a way as to have CO2 budget left over at the end of the year, then they carry it over to the next year or allow them to sell it. But any system that doesn't involve giving the budget directly to citizens is broken and designed for graft and fuck that.

[bumby]

Not necessarily disagreeing with you, but that type of rationing in the U.S. only seems to work if there is a collective agreement on an existential crisis (e.g. WWII).

Unfortunately, there's still too much disagreement on climate change at the population level for that level of shared sacrifice.

[wang_li]

If the proposal is mandatory restrictions on CO2 emissions then giving every citizen an equal share of the allowed emissions vastly beats giving those to industry or taxing people. Doing this also creates awareness about CO2 usage among the populace.

Opinions on climate change are irrelevant to my proposal to give the credits equally to everyone or some other scheme. If the population isn't in favor of a carbon regulatory regime, then it doesn't matter how it is implemented, we'll just replace the politicians who act outside of our preferences. The point of giving everyone their share is that it is literally fair and not just a scheme to enrich carbon alarmists or activists.

Of course the lack of opportunity for graft and criminality is exactly why my proposal won't happen. But we should tar and feather any pol or bureaucrat who implements any other scheme.

[bumby]

> Opinions on climate change are irrelevant to my proposal

How would such a proposal be enacted to begin with?

My comment was that for a proposal like that to be passed initially, it would almost certainly need the support of a politician's respective constituents. Anything else would be political suicide and have slim-to-no chance of even getting debated. Blame it on lobbying, or career politicians, or whatever else but that's the reality in the U.S.

There's lots of ways that carbon reduction system could work. If it's largely a man-made problem there's probably many man-made solutions. But, outside of dictatorial solutions, you have to start with the democratic political will to see it changed.

[wang_li]

I was just responding to the proposal put forward upstream with a number of points enumerated. Things can be dictatorial but fair. And realistically I think most western countries can maintain their current standard of living while reducing emmisssions, as I too believe we are capable of solutions. It doesn't mean sacrifice if carbon became part of the economy. Honestly it could be the unit of exchange if we chose to make it so.

[bumby]

> Things can be dictatorial but fair.

So who gets to choose? One person's benevolent dictator is another person's despot.