[Pick-A-Hill2019]

There exists a world beyond your experience. A world in which people on low incomes have to chose between heating and eating. Sure - there are those that fly to meetings but there is also a world less represented/vocal here on HN for whom this could be (probably will be) a crisis.

Yes, Global Warming is a problem but the people trying to keep themselves from freezing contribute a much smaller amount than Big-Tech and industry as a whole.

Trying to shift the blame from corporations on to people just trying to survive the winter is a tale of corporate white-washing/green-washing/hand-waving/lobbying.

[tshaddox]

These are two separate concerns which can be dealt with independently and simultaneously. A society which can afford to prevent its members from suffering due to lack of food or home heat ought to do so, and can do so via means very much unrelated to the costs and negative externalities of jet fuel.

[rad_gruchalski]

And how do you do that?

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

One popular approach is to add a massive tax/duty on e.g. CO2 emissions, but redistribute the revenue equally to all citizens.

If everyone were consuming the same amount/causing the same amount of emissions, this would be a no-op. However, since the rich tend to consume more, this will be a net positive for poorer people, and at the same time it will make decisions about activity that causes emissions more meaningful.

It's also much more palatable than bans or rationing, reasonably easy to implement, and avoids the trap of populist "ban highly visible thing of the day" approaches that tend to lower quality of life without addressing the real issue.

[b9a2cab5]

> since the rich tend to consume more

Yes, billionaires with private jets tend to consume more but your average multimillionaire is probably working remote from a cushy white collar job while poor people need to commute to and from work (often long distances because rent is expensive). CO2 taxes are regressive however you try to sell them.

[jonas21]

First, that's not actually true. Have a look at figures 3 and 4 of this paper [1]. CO2 emissions increase with income, and that holds both globally and within particular countries they studied (US, UK, China, India).

Second, even if it were true, you'd still have control over how you redistribute the revenue, and as a result, you can make the net effect as progressive as you want.

[1] https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10...

[b9a2cab5]

If you were going to redistribute nonuniformly why wouldn't you just tax people and give it to the poor and skip the hide-tax-behind-a-fancy-name exercise?

In practice billionaires wouldn't care how much you tax them unless you taxed a substantial portion of income, they'd still consume what they wanted. In order to materially change even middle class peoples' behavior prices need to change by double digit percentage points, and when you factor in that people don't spend all they earn, that's a lot of tax.

[WalterBright]

Aviation is very very much driven by the price of fuel. Pretty much the whole drive towards modernizing airliners is reducing the fuel cost.

Adding a tax on the carbon content of fuels will push that even harder.

[woodpanel]

> And how do you [reconcile extreme green policy goals with income losses for the poorest]?

There are no answers given usually, less so convincingly, mostly because the ones demanding scarcity are usually not the ones affected by it.

Just trying to find one member of the working class / blue collar amongst ExtencionRebllion and the like will be a tedious task. Not so much if you look for kids of millionaires, or of bilionaires. Or Millionaires and Billionaires themselves.

As of now I can only see two outcomes:

They either start making these scarcity demands a part of their foreign policy (meaning getting tough on the actual global polluters, not their domestic poor people who barely can afford one cheap vacation to the Balears per year).

Or we just start naming what we would have called it 150 years ago: A top-down class-war.

[HWR_14]

I don't know how to parse what you're saying at all. There are tons of working class people worried about climate change and it's pretty trivial to design systems that increase the income for the poorest while being green.

Meanwhile your "ExtinctionRebellion" phrase seems like a political touchstone that you assume other people know what you're talking about, but I have no clue what it is.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_Rebellion

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_Rebellion_Youth

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_Strike_for_Climate

Her Holyness [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Thunberg

from 1968 [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome

and 1972 from that same club [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth

and countless dystopian science-fiction literature and movies from that epoch.

[HWR_14]

It seems like you're very upset about a very small fringe group.

[Lammy]

The Smart People in the USA realized population growth was a Bad Thing Actually™ and got really into saving the environment in the mid-1960s after we ended racism and poverty forever and needed something even more noble to do: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=segregationist...

edit: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED050960.pdf#page=13

"We have all heard about a population problem in the developing nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America, where death rates have dropped rapidly and populations have exploded. Only recently have we recognized that the United States may have population problems of its own. There are differing views. Some say that it is a problem of crisis proportions — that the growth of population is responsible for pollution of our air and water, depletion of our natural resources, and a broad array of social ills."

SUBTLE

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Heretic! May Gretas wrath come upon you! ;->

[nradov]

The usual approach is some form of income redistribution.

[dotancohen]

Nationalize the railroads?

[midasuni]

What good will that do?

[satronaut]

make them more expensive, less comfortable, and less reliable?

[xiphias2]

General availability of food and heat and general survival are the main requirements for reproduction. Having a big family is a great thing to do, and I wish everybody the joy of having babies, but at the same time it leads to tragedy of the commons on the global scale.

[Zenst]

20% of my income goes on fuel and I'm a low-fuel user, I live on a budget of walking and getting the bus is a treat.

For me gas prices in the UK, what really messed me up was the standing charges (daily charge for infrastructure) circa 2006 they doubled that but lowered the unit price which for the average family of 4 usage, worked out as a saving of £100 a year. Though as a single person, that change cost me near on £100 a year in extra standing charge and a saving of unit cost of £20 a year. I just find it annoying how most fuel usage pricing can and does actually penalise responsible low-usage users. Sure the more you buy the cheaper things get but when you get to climate, wear and tear upon the infrastructure - those users who don't have to worry about the money or have any care are reward by a fixed impact cost upon infrastructure - even if they use 10x more than somebody else - they both pay the same. Then the more they use - then costs become cheaper for them.

Pro-tip - slow baking a baked potatoes in the oven is a good meal that also warms the home so double usage of that fuel.

What would I change - well I'd quota people - additional quota's for medical conditions and other variable but the gist would be - fuel you use up to that quota then you pay X price per unit and the standing charge is dropped and worked into the price. Now, after you use your quota - you pay extra per unit of fuel. That way those who do the most impact are more fairly paying for it. Sadly it won't happen, but then - some serious action is needed upon climate change.

FWIW when I was more fiscally able (energy usage less than 1% of income)- my fuel usage was the same heating wise - always been a jumper if needed and going for a brisk walk does wonders for feeling warm.

[y4mi]

If you reduced your carbon footprint to 0 for your entire life you will have saved less then a second of industrial CO2 output.

Personal choice is meaningless wrt climate change. It's a topic that cannot be addressed without structural/societal changes, likely by legislation.

[mcntsh]

> industrial CO2 output

Industrial CO2 output doesn't just happen in a vacuum. It's a by-product for manufacturing things that consumers want/need.

[y4mi]

Only in aggregation when everyone else changes their behaviour as well. Each individuals contribution is too tiny to have an impact, which is why we need a systematic change or legislation, so that its no longer a choice/personal responsibility to take action.

Kurzgesagt's recent video (sponsored by bill gates notes)e xpressed the issue much better then I ever could, so i'll only link to it here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiw6_JakZFc

[Zenst]

You are spot on.

It's a bit like most changes, they take time and sure my impact akin to a grain of sand in a desert, but then I feel comfortable with my choices and eventually over time, such choices will become less open as there will get a time in which government will act.

I'm mindful that many when it comes to change that is impaction can be a case of they don't so why should I and well I don't have too so I can do what I like and the pandemic as been most insightful into such mindsets. Hence we saw laws to enforces common sense in situations that had the people all been responsible, would not of been needed or come to pass. Hence I do expect the whole fossil/fuel/resource aspect of human consumption to become more and more regulated in years to come. Will it be done right is the question or will we just see those who can afford to be feckless, just as enabled as currently.

That's why I agree with you upon this and do foresee that legislation may well be the only way - alas the issue is global and that is a real cruz as when as countries tend to act as individuals and cases of - well they're not so why should we and other unfair arguments play out. So as always the politics becomes more an issue than the issue the politics is trying to solve.

[colechristensen]

There are plenty of places that charge higher rates for heavy usage tiers.

[petre]

You can't quota with fixed quotas, it's not practical. Winters are not equally cold. One could charge for the infrastructure as a fixed per kWh cost on usage, so low consumers would be impacted less.

[saeranv]

I'm a little confused at how you think the previous comment somehow is shifting blames from corporations to people. While true that rising energy costs will effect consumers, it's also one of the ways we can change the incentive structure for corporations!

For example: No one should be choosing between heating and eating, from a thermodynamic perspective. It's trivial to drastically cut heating energy through very low-tech methods: increasing insulation in the walls, and add extra layers of glass to your windows. The reason it's not done is because real estate developers have no incentive to increase their construction costs by some marginal amount since they know that natural gas cost is so cheap no customer is going to care about heating energy reduction. Not only that, most customers strongly prefer the cheaper construction once they're shown how many decades it would take for the better building envelope to pay for itself via energy bill reductions. Same reason there isn't a incentive to switch from (dirty) gas to electric, install solar panels, switch to heat pumps etc etc.

Now consider how building related carbon emissions make up about 40% of the total emissions, and you'll see how much of an infuriating obstacle cheap energy is in cutting carbon emissions.

Yes, there will be low-income people for who this will be a crisis, but that can be dealt with separately: government subsidies, or government subsidies of envelope retrofits (great stimulus idea). There is no reason frame this issue in a us versus them manner.

[the8472]

How about not letting high income people use the baseline needs of low income people to deflect responsibility for their freely made choices? Especially when they're responsible for a much larger fraction of the carbon footprint. It's not only on corporations.

[throwawaylinux]

It's pretty sickening when hundreds of billionaires and celebrities and rulers fly their private jets to these secretive conferences where they decide exactly how horrible and greedy Joe Coalminer is, and what penance he must pay for his sins.

I can't believe people try to shrug it off as no big deal because the absolute carbon output is small, or postulating that they must have offset it. If there are two things people react badly to, it is injustice / unfairness, and hypocrisy. The ruling class has done more to turn the average person against their climate change proposals than just about anything else, in my opinion. Quite probably by design, such is the blatant audacity of their double standards.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

What else is new? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wasser_predigen_und_Wein_trin...

[Lammy]

> where they decide exactly how horrible and greedy Joe Coalminer is, and what penance he must pay for his sins

Don't worry, The Smartest Guys In The Room went from 0 to 100 on this issue in 1969 when no major societal changes were going on and for no ulterior reason at all: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED050960.pdf

"The difference [in family size] is important not simply because of the numbers but because it bears vitally upon a fundamental question about the Nation's future: Do we wish to continue to invest even more of our resources and those of much of the rest of the world in meeting demands for more services, more classrooms, more hospitals, and more housing as population continues to grow?"

[tda]

These high energy prices mostly hit wasteful industries like greenhouse tomato growers. That is because they gave always relied on cheap, subsidized natural gas. Consumers pay approximately 75% energy tax already so even a 100% rise before taxes results in only a 25% percent rise after.

I live in a 100 year old, poorly insulated house with my family of 4, and we manage to use half of the average for a family house here. And we are not really trying, only thing we do is limit what parts of the house we heat (not the bedrooms) and set the temperature smartly.

I cycle 30km to my work on an electric bike to exercise and limit car usage.

So yes, I really don't think the price rise will have too much impact on consumers directly. I think most people in the Netherlands can halve their energy consumption here with very limited impact on QoL just by heating less and using their car less. And if the price really gets problematic our gov could just lower the taxation

[bojangleslover]

Yeah why can't the "heating vs eating" people just take 2hrs to bike 30km to work every day like we do?

On the flip side I respect your dedication to bike that much thru Dutch winter!

[tda]

I don't think there are more than a handful of "heating vs eating" people in the Netherlands. On the contrary; poverty is positively correlated with obesity.

We do have lots of baby boomers in big houses that they heatup just for themselves. My mom has 4 times my heating bill by herself than I have with a family of four. It would solve a lot of problems if the elderly move to smaller houses and leave the bigger houses for families that need them.

[Scoundreller]

> It would solve a lot of problems if the elderly move to smaller houses and leave the bigger houses for families that need them.

A lot of places make that kind of swap uneconomical. From paying capital gains now instead of later, to loss of property tax increase exemptions to loss of property tax deferrals. Some places exempt gains on housing gains but not other gains (kinda a problem if you downsize and take a windfall)…

Many places ignore housing wealth when it comes to social assistance, but include everything else.

[tda]

yes, exactly. So that is why it is time to change the incentives / tax structure because there is a real housing crisis gling on for young families. Nearly everyone I know with a nice big house is over 65. And half of them are alone. On a personal level I understand amd sympathise with their choice not to downgrade to a smaller house. On a systemic level this is pretty ridiculous. Land value and property taxes should be raised significantly, whilst income taxws should be lowered. I still need to so more reading on Henry George, but I think this was a key part of Georgism

[WarOnPrivacy]

> I cycle 30km to my work on an electric bike to exercise and limit car usage.

In most of the US that's a good way to land in the ER.

source: son t-boned on his e-bike 6 months ago

[whearyou]

Sounds like you guys are ok with the cold. When I lived in cold climates I tried what you’re describing to limit spending. Living in cold indoors wrecked my mood even more than winter generally did so I gave up on it and accepted having to spend more on heat and save elsewhere. I guess what I’m saying is that your approach probably wouldn’t work for everyone. Fortunately I live somewhere warmer now.

[i_am_proteus]

You might find this interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Sources_of_hydro...

[yxhuvud]

> I live in a 100 year old, poorly insulated house

Have you investigated if it is feasible to retrofit proper isolation? It has been fairly common here in Sweden, though I'd expect that by now most of the housing stock has good isolation. Stuff like triple layers of glass in the windows also helps a lot.

[tda]

Technically feasible sure, but I thibk I used 1100m3 gas last year (would have to look it up teo be sure). So to invest 30000 euro to save 50% of that makes no economical sense. Only when the windows need replacement anyway I'll upgrade to the latest and greatest. But for now I'm conetemplating investing in a moderate air/air heatpump (about 5000 euro, 5kw or something). I think that will also reduce my gas consumption considerably for all but the coldest days. Because labour is so expensive and replacing all windows is so wastefull (they are all oldish double layered windows) better insulation is not so appealing.

I must say though that a properly insulated house can have a better climate in winter as you can keep the humidity much higher.

[bserge]

How long does it take you? I do 14km in ~40 minutes on a normal bike, was thinking an ebike would be way better.

I was hoping to make my own, but maybe I'll cave in and just use a Swapfiets electric...

[tda]

Used to take 45-55mins on a speed pedelec (45km/h) but I sold it and bought a regular ebike set at the US speed limit of 32 km/h. Depending on wind it takes me 60 to 70 minutes for 28.7 km.

[xxpor]

I do ~15 km in ~31 minutes on an ebike. About ~1/3rd of the time is spent sitting at stoplights, as measured by Strava (18 minutes moving time, 31 minutes total time).

[frenchy]

14 km/40 minutes is 21 km/h. Assuming you don't live in hilly terrain, if you use an e-bike with a 25 km/h limiter, you can probably go a little faster, but it won't make huge difference.

It will probably will mean that you get less tired and exercise less, which may be good or bad depending on your opinion.

[dude4you]

"wasteful industries"

ROTFL. Like fertilizer production?

[Aulig]

That's why i like the idea of a "climate dividend". Everyone will pay a carbon tax, which then finances the climate dividend, which is evenly paid out to the population. So if you emit below average amounts of carbon, you will actually be better off financially.

[5560675260]

This would also greatly help with social coherence. First make living costs so high, that they are unaffordable for the underclasses, leaving them no other choice than complete reliance on the state payouts. Then make subsidies conditional, tiered, assigned on sufficiently complicated rules (as a side effect this would improve employment opportunities is public sector). And finally, whenever serfs would choose to misbehave, there wouldn't even be a need to intimidate - just dangle a possibility of freezing to death in winter.

[HWR_14]

You're right that making it conditional would be bad. But we can just not do that. Why wouldn't we make it unconditional? It's not like you lose your Social Security payments for having committed criminal acts.

[marcosdumay]

Hum... Have you looked on the situation of ex-criminals?

I really fail to imagine an unconditional transfer (like the one you are replying to) turning into a monster of untraceable rules.

[cool_dude85]

>And finally, whenever serfs would choose to misbehave, there wouldn't even be a need to intimidate - just dangle a possibility of freezing to death in winter.

This is reality today under capitalism. What happens to me if I don't choose to work?

[dnautics]

you have so many no-work options. You can be nice to people and live off their (informal) charity. You could probably work out an arrangement where you barter services for lodging. You could go live with relatives that work.

[cool_dude85]

Same argument applies to the quote I'm responding to. Jackbooted gubmint thugs cut your power in winter? Go live with relatives that have power, or get charity, or barter things for firewood.

[rad_gruchalski]

I like the idea. However, I am afraid this would lead to people with no children being disadvantaged again.

Increased prices would clearly make it more expensive to raise children. This would lead to more social care towards people with children. How would you recommend solving that?

[colinmhayes]

Developed countries aren't having enough children. We need to provide families with children more assistance, not less. Raising children deserves to be seen as a job because it provides value to society. I say that as a person without children who hopes to never have any.

[lotsofpulp]

But not having children reduces fossil fuel consumption the most, and that is the goal of the tax, is it not?

Reducing capitas will cause a much quicker and effective change than reducing per capita consumption.

[colinmhayes]

The goal of the tax is to force people the internalize the externalities caused by their consumption.

[conductr]

I would think the carbon tax part would be based on carbon usage which is a factor of consumption. The entire family’s consumption. So if the rebate is $1000 per person a family if 4 gets $4000. However the net gain/loss is only calculated after knowing what your family consumes. A family of 4 bicyclists may come out ahead while a family of 4 SUV drivers may have a net loss.

[HWR_14]

> This would lead to more social care towards people with children. How would you recommend solving that?

I'm sorry, what's the issue? If we need children and need to incentivize it, it's what we'll do. And by definition, you're talking about advantages only to counterbalance new disadvantages. So we need to solve what?

[rad_gruchalski]

What’s the reason to having more people and children? It’s to “grow the economy”. Is constant growth sustainable?

[HWR_14]

If we don't need them we won't subsidize them. The OP seems to think we'll need to subsidize children more for some reason.

[petre]

Look at Japan and you'll see the reason. Aging population.

[rad_gruchalski]

Which is not good for economy. I understand. So more children are needed to support the aging population in the future. My question still stands: is this sustainable indefinitely?

[piokoch]

Someone who works as a delivery guy needs to drive a car a lot, such person would have to pay big climate dividend. Is that ok? Probably not.

Taxation is a road to nowhere as rich people will always either find the way to avoid taxes or find the way to throw the costs of those taxes on the poor. This happens with every kind of tax.

The only solution to decrease CO2 emission is to behave in a rational way and use the only practical, tested and available now clean energy source - nuclear power plants. No amount of eco-talk will change reality that neither solar nor wind energy plants will be able to power modern economy. Europe is learning this the hard way right now.

Maybe Europe will do the suicidal jump with the ideas like "Fit for 55", and will kill its economy to lower global emission by 0.05% but the rest of the World, which emits much more CO2 and will emit even more when all production will be moved from Europe to Asia or USA cannot care less.

[PeterisP]

If delivery services emit a lot of CO2, then making delivery services (which is not about "someone who works as a delivery guy" but rather about the company selling delivery services) much more expensive is a key part of ensuring that delivery services get used less and only by those needs where those delivery services are relatively more important i.e. those who would be willing to pay the significantly increased price of deliveries.

After all, the whole point of carbon tax is to reduce usage, not to gain revenue or penalize some people; so it works if and only if it meaningfully changes behavior, i.e. if the tax significantly raises prices of some specific market goods/services and thus drives people to use less of those specific goods/services. A simple income-proportional tax or just "tax the rich" doesn't incentivize reducing emissions, so it's useless for that goal; it's perhaps useful for social equity and wealth redistribution, but that's something not directly linked to climate change goals.

It's not about money, it's about CO2; driving deliveries needs to emit less CO2 so the goal is to either get more efficient deliveries (e.g. electric vehicles) or less deliveries (putting some of those delivery drivers out of jobs), and "who's paying for that" is just choosing the most effective means to achieve these goals.

[davidw]

> Someone who works as a delivery guy needs to drive a car a lot, such person would have to pay big climate dividend. Is that ok? Probably not.

It gives the delivery company a big incentive to switch to electric vehicles or ebikes or something more efficient. This harnesses market power to push companies to be more efficient with their resources: the ones who are more innovative at avoiding CO2 usage will see financial benefits.

[EricE]

why are you assuming an electric car will be an overall reduction in CO2?

[davidw]

It's not an assumption. Of course, it depends on a lot of things, but broadly speaking, they use less CO2. And the great thing about a carbon tax is that this shakes out through the system: if they're not reducing CO2, you would see it in costs and could react accordingly. This price signal is a lot more convenient than having to, as an end user, try to figure out what the best and worst things to do in terms of CO2.

[wonderwonder]

Company will just hire the delivery drivers as contractors a la Uber and pass the costs onto them.

[davidw]

Same logic applies though. If you're a contractor and it costs too much because gas is expensive, you either don't do it or demand more money. Or maybe only people with low-emissions vehicles get into it.

[imtringued]

>Taxation is a road to nowhere as rich people will always either find the way to avoid taxes

The entire point of CO2 taxes is that you are supposed to avoid them.

[tapas73]

There is more than one way to avoid taxes. (hollywood accounting)

[soperj]

>Someone who works as a delivery guy needs to drive a car a lot, such person would have to pay big climate dividend.

Delivery emissions should be attached to the person getting the delivery. Otherwise you could just skip most of your emissions by having everything delivered.

[newt_slowly]

It would be far to complicated to try and count every bit of emissions like this. Instead, the emissions are taxed at the source - when buying fuel. Therefore, the delivery company would be paying the carbon taxes, and they could choose to either pass those costs on to you, or to, for example, switch to electric vehicles to be more competitive against their rivals.

Either way, it changes your behavior, because if delivery is more expensive (to factor in the externalities it causes) you will either consume less, or pay more. This ultimately "attaches the emissions to the person getting the delivery" but in a far less complex and less game-able way.

[stonemetal12]

I go into the store and buy a pair of shoes. Am I given a bit of the emissions of the supply chain that delivered it to the store from the manufacturer?

If I order something off Amazon, do I get a say in where the package is shipped from to control "my" emissions.

[aembleton]

> Am I given a bit of the emissions of the supply chain that delivered it to the store from the manufacturer?

Yes, you would have to use some of your carbon credits to pay for the delivery and manufacture of the shoe. The product would have both a monetary and a carbon price. If you don't have enough credits, then you can buy some on the spot market from someone who isn't using theirs up.

This would incentivise repair of the shoe, as it may require fewer carbon credits.

[lenkite]

Pity that you are getting down-voted for a rational position. Wind output dropping is one of the factors behind Electricity prices surging in the EU this year. But folks here are reluctant to even acknowledge this fact due to effective renewables brainwashing.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-renewables-us...

If there really needs to be a carbon tax for delivery, it makes the most sense to transfer it directly to the consumer who demanded order-delivery. Any other mechanism will just leave a tax loophole.

And yes, emission taxes/standards should be applied to the whole world. Right now, they are adversely affecting the poor and lower middle class of the first world - none of whom are represented on HN. Meanwhile China can keep polluting away to its heart's content producing ~30% of the world's emissions by itself.

[petre]

> Wind output dropping is one of the factors behind Electricity prices surging

Yes, true. Guess what is used to compensate for lack of renewable output? Natural gas fired plants with short ramp up time. This will only drive electricity prices up.

The article is about gas shortages and people at risk of freezing this winter, yet almost everyone here is talking about CO2 taxes and taxing natural gas?

[jhgb]

> Someone who works as a delivery guy needs to drive a car a lot, such person would have to pay big climate dividend. Is that ok? Probably not.

Probably yes, because that the whole point of Pigouvian taxes.

[MonkeyClub]

I wonder whether this will be like income tax, theoretically proportional, but practically affecting the rich less than the poor, and companies even less?

[rovolo]

Just to clarify this point, the income tax is progressive and affects the rich more than the poor on income. A software developer making $150k will pay 24% on additional income while someone making $30k will pay 12% on additional income.

The distinction in the US is whether you make your money through labor (max 37% tax) or capital gains (max 20% tax). There is a lower tax rate for capitalists (who make money via ownership of capital) vs laborers (who make money through labor income). Furthermore, capital gains can be delayed until you realize your gains (sell your capital). This distinction is what practically gives the rich lower taxes than the poor.

[imtringued]

All this nonsense should be rolled into a single income tax and then the overall tax rate should be lowered. Yeah sure there might be good reasons for a low capital gains tax but if that is the case then there are good reasons for a low income tax as well. The only thing the income tax should be doing is discourage employers from piling up all the work on as few people as possible.

Employers prefer keeping people full time and full time unemployed because it is more efficient per worker and the bargaining power of the unemployed doesn't exist. If everyone were to work according to their own demand for labor then this bargaining power cliff wouldn't exist and a whole lot of welfare programs could be abolished.

[raxxorrax]

This would need a huge apparatus to measure and distribute funds that will be ineffective. There is no effect on climate.

[dghughes]

>A world in which people on low incomes have to chose between heating and eating.

What my mother gets for old age pension is the same as the cost as a tank of heating oil for her house. Thankfully she doesn't need a full tank of oil each month and summer means less fuel burned except for hot water for the oil fired water heater. I do help my mom monetarily as much as I can but yes it is a huge burden for low income people to heat their homes.

[jaredklewis]

I can't find anything in the parent comment that suggests a lack of sympathy for working class people or an attempt to put any blame on them.

There are countless policy choices that can help the less fortunate, the great majority of which are not incompatible with gas or energy being more expensive.

For example, I'm not a huge fan of agricultural subsidies, not because I want food to be more expensive, but because of the negative environmental and health effects they've had. But the money the government pays to farmer giants could instead be redistributed to poor people and (IMHO) help them a great deal more.

Likewise, revenue from taxes on things like gasoline could mitigate the effects of higher cost for low income families, which still encourage upper classes to invest in clean energy.

[mcv]

Wasting energy isn't going to help those people. More money is. "Poor people" is a bad argument to avoid fair energy prices. If you care about poor people, make them less poor, and switch energy use to more sustainable sources.

There's something to be said for taxing fossil fuels and paying that money back equally to everybody. People who polute will lose money, and people who don't will receive it.

[pier25]

I live in Mexico and there are still millions here that need to use wood to cook or heat water.

[epistasis]

Wood is not a fossil fuel, so as long as forests are not being destroyed overall for the fuel, the are carbon neutral.

However, people's health would probably be increased if we could provide people electric heat.

[pier25]

The point is that energy is not cheap for everyone. Apple products are luxury items for the vast majority of humanity.

Also, like you said, cooking and heating with wood is terrible for the lungs and this has become much more very evident with COVID.

[Karrot_Kream]

With wood things get a bit unclear for me. Using something like district heating which uses wood as a source to generate hot water/steam and pipe that to houses is a way to stay carbon neutral while keeping emissions away from people to avoid impacting their health. But this assumes that heating needs can be sustainably forested. Right now there's also all sorts of shenanigans where wood is imported from the US as biomass in Europe as a sustainable source, but the carbon costs from shipping wood across the ocean are not considered.