[danzig13]

The article points out subsidies are one of the main contributors to growth in production of fossil fuels. So forget regulation, just take the government thumb off the scale in favor of fossil fuels.

This is somewhat disingenuous on my part as I am for using the government thumb if necessary to achieve goals that allow society to continue like a clean energy mix. However, maybe this could still be done in a light touch way like massive grants into basic research which I do think the US government has had success with in the past.

Fossil fuel could take part in this as well but from my perspective, they have never been interested in pursuing goals like efficiency and sustainability though innovation. They are driven by finding ways to create more demand for energy use and scaling up existing technology that is good enough for that purpose.

[ZeroGravitas]

The problem with this is that you suddenly find that all the people who you thought were arguing in good faith about not liking government intervention, were actually only doing that as a tactic to stall specific things they didn't like, not as a general principle.

They'll have a completely new set of disingenuous talking points (unsubsidized fuel would hit the poorest hardest!) ready to confuse people and to stall that action as well.

[DuskStar]

> They'll have a completely new set of disingenuous talking points (unsubsidized fuel would hit the poorest hardest!) ready to confuse people and to stall that action as well.

Wasn't that literally the left's argument against carbon taxes on Oregon?

[ZeroGravitas]

If they argued for some counterbalancing arrangement with the money raised they were probably on the left if they just said "well, I guess we just have to stick with what we currently do, it's not like government intervention would be desirable here" then they were probably not actually on the left.

[DuskStar]

The initial proposal was for the carbon tax to be revenue-neutral and (IIRC) returned as a per-capita rebate. That didn't pass, so the followup used the revenue for social programs as an attempt at bipartisanship. The followup also failed to pass, though.

[Gibbon1]

Imposing taxes on poor people who have little agency/power seems kind of pointless.

[gedy]

You see the same thing with 'free speech'

[tomatotomato37]

What they mean by subsidies are externalities they government doesn't tax, not active subsidies. The problem with that thinking is that people aren't remotely in agreement of what the dollar cost of those externalities actually are, so painting them as straight subsidies that can simply be cut off is dishonest.

In addition, the use of untaxed externalities in arguments like this implies they aren't asking to take the government's thumb off, they are asking for the government to use more thumb, except against the companies they don't like.

[acollins1331]

There's a difference between putting your thumb on companies, and an entire sector. Knee jerk hate for industry wide regulation makes no sense, it's precisely the job of the government to set the standards of operation for a particular market.

[tomatotomato37]

I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying in practice good regulation requires serious thought in quantity of regulation, the role of state vs federal, and the prevention of regulatory capture by said economic sector. Rushing through these things with no more thought put into it than lofty ideals is how you end up with dysfunctional bureaucracys that cause voters to swing towards politicans promising to indiscriminately tear the whole thing down.

It annoys me how little thought is put into making sure any of these new systems will work in a democratic system where the people negativity affected have a vote too.

[Gravityloss]

There will be societal effects. For example if heating fuel subsidy is removed, poor people with big uninsulated houses will be hit worse. So a candidate is unlikely to touch such a subsidy.

Energy policy is related to social policy.