[fjh]

> As an example, 2 parties could both say No to a higher Co2-tax, but one of them does so because they claim climate change is a hoax, while the other one has a problem with it not being progressive enough, thus hitting poorer people harder than rich people.

But as a voter who is in favour of a higher CO2 tax, why would you care about that distinction? If there's one party who thinks climate change doesn't exist and one who believes in climate change but is unwilling to do anything about it, the only difference between the parties is in their rhetoric. I'd argue that voting based on actual policy proposals a benefit, not a drawback of this approach.

[dmurray]

> If there's one party who thinks climate change doesn't exist and one who believes in climate change but is unwilling to do anything about it

That's obviously not the distinction between the parties here. The second one intends (or at least has a policy to) do something about it, but just not by raising the existing CO2 tax. Maybe instead they intend to raise the top rate of income tax and increase subsidies for public transport.

If you incorporated all of the parties policies into the Wahl-O-Mat, that would all come out in the wash and you'd end up with your preferred party, but also you might abandon the process because it's taking too long.

The challenge is to distil the parties' policies into a reasonable subset that accurately captures the differences between them, some kind of principal component analysis.

[fjh]

> That's obviously not the distinction between the parties here. The second one intends (or at least has a policy to) do something about it, but just not by raising the existing CO2 tax.

Do they, though? I don't know how familiar you are with the German political parties, but the concern about climate change is mostly empty marketing on all sides. We should stop running coal electricity plants, but somehow turning off all nuclear plants immediately is more important. We should stop subsidising driving to work, but that would be regressive etc. Most parties are making noises about climate change being bad, but they're all pretty unwilling to accept any trade-offs involved in doing something about it.

I'm saying if you want something effective do be done, look at what the parties are actually proposing to do, not how concerned they're expressing to be in their election flyers.

[dmurray]

Yeah, I generally agree, everyone is in favour of things like "peace" or "health" or (more controversially in the US, but mainstream in Germany) "the environment". The questions shouldn't be about whether you want to improve the environment, but what hard/unpopular choices you are willing to make to achieve that.

So you should give the party in favour of increasing income tax and subsidizing public transport a chance to say that, because it's a hard choice, just a different hard one than increasing the carbon tax.

[belorn]

Something I would like being asked in those election questions is if any party are willing to put in a ban for IC in the energy sector for the same date that they intend to ban IC in the transport sector. A set date where no more fossil fuels is being burned in the energy sector would be a distinct political message to investors and voters, rather than vague concerns about climate change.

Similar, it would be nice if any party would have a date when subsidizes to fossil fuel based power plants will end. There is unlikely that any party is in favor of having those subsidizes, but it seems equally unlikely that anyone is ready yet to be the ones to remove them and face the trade-offs of not paying those plants to keep the engines warm and ready.

[TonyTrapp]

> But as a voter who is in favour of a higher CO2 tax, why would you care about that distinction?

You cannot find a party that you agree with 100%. If you have to choose the lesser evil, you may still want to check why exactly a party disagrees with you.