[hedora]

I think new ICE engines should include a $200/ton atmospheric carbon capture fee based on their expected lifetime fuel consumption. (That works out to a $2/gallon tax. I’m fine with charging it at the pump, especially if established at the same time as a universal basic income scheme).

[kimixa]

This would only work if every source of atmospheric carbon was equally taxed - otherwise you get incentives to have indirect carbon usage, be it in costs of manufacture, or energy generation through other means.

Otherwise you get BS like scrapping vehicles that took significant amounts of atmospheric carbon to produce, just because they have a slightly better gas mileage. It should only be encouraged if the total over the lifetime of the vehicle is better, but manufacturing costs are often excluded.

Plus this naturally excludes those who can't afford the upfront cost of a new vehicle - even if everything was taxed "correctly" by this logic and so was lower cost in the long run.

[analognoise]

That would only hurt poor people. $2/gallon extra would cause overnight riots.

[tonyedgecombe]

If you wanted to introduce a carbon tax then you could return the money to the population as a carbon dividend. The poor would be better off (because they don't consume much anyway) and everybody else would have an incentive to reduce their emissions.

[hedora]

That’s why I suggested UBI for the pump tax alternative.

(Most poor people don’t buy new cars.)

[riku_iki]

that's the only way to incentivize people to optimize their routes, habits, switch to hybrid/electrics, otherwise consequences can be much tougher in 30-50 years with no way to fix it.

[HWR_14]

Poor people cannot afford an EV now, and they cannot afford a $2/gallon tax. Taking away options without supplying any new ones will cause a large number of people to be unable to commute to work and huge economic upheaval.

[riku_iki]

I don't see how you come to such conclusion, I think $2/gallon tax will be some fraction of total ownership cost for the car (fuel, car cost, insurance, maintenance), those who can't afford that fraction can't afford car too.

[HWR_14]

There are many people out there who can barely afford a car. On average gasoline accounts for ~16% of people's transportation budgets and ~2.5% of their take-home pay (obviously, these numbers are using average everything). A $2/gallon tax is an increase of a little more than 50% (not in California, but using the US average price). So that's more than 1.25% of their tax home pay and 8% of their transportation cost. That's a lot. And again, those are averages. For people at the bottom it's worse.

It's not a lot if you are making six-figures. But for a lot of people it quite literally puts driving to work as too expensive.

[riku_iki]

> So that's more than 1.25% of their tax home pay

its totally not a lot given we are talking about future of planet and humanity and that penalties on children of exactly the same people will be much higher if we won't stop pollute the planet.