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by PaulHoule 2161 days ago
In the us people riot if police kill an unarmed black.

People in the us accept that the price of fuel goes up and down but they are the only ones. In other countries people riot when the cost of fuel goes up.

Many people have a lot of fear that tradable emission permits are an Enron-style scam that will suck money out of our pockets into somebody's pocket who will recycle 1% of profits back to politicians to maintain their privilege.

What we need to is either ban certain uses of fossil fuels or introduce an energy source that is so superior that people don't want to use fossil fuels. The latter is hard but doesn't violate the laws of physics, but any other kind of Collective action on climate violates the laws of social physics which are absolute for N > 10^9.

1 comments

return the money from these tariffs to everyone through a unconditional income
Definitely if you did a carbon tax it could be made revenue neutral by either paying it back to people and cut other taxes.
The protests happen in part because the demonstrators do not trust the government to spend the money well. They are afraid that they will distribute it to the "usual few" or "subsidize the lazy ones". Distributing the tariffs equitably among the population would take that stigma away. This would encourage those tariffs that are so necessary for us to comply with the Paris agreement.