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Is a Carbon Tax a Good Idea?
.-.-.- (aka Fullstop) asks: "Cosmos Magazine is reporting that the rate of carbon dioxide emissions has more than doubled since the 1990's. Several researchers fear increased levels may be unstoppable. Australia's national science agency, CSIRO flatly states that current carbon reduction efforts are just not working. Add to this heady mix the fact that Toyota is pushing for a carbon tax and Australia, and the UK, are currently considering one, and a trend begins to emerge. If current reduction methods are not working what will? The United States currently employs a voluntary carbon reduction scheme based on market trading, with very limited corporate participation. Is a carbon tax a good way to stabilize emissions in the face of heretofore failed efforts at stabilization?"
I was watching the Colbert Report the other day and the CEO from Timberland was on there explaining his carbon neutral stance and he sounded quite avid about it. He was clearly agitated from Steven's persona of a right wing nut who couldn't understand. It was more awkward than funny.
But it caused me to wonder what would happen if I urged the big company I work for (and it is multi-national) to go carbon neutral. Well, on the surface, we don't burn anything. But I thought harder about the thousands of computers we must operate and the kilowatt upon kilowatt of power that is most likely used by each facility. Ok, so (since we can't assume the power company is adjusting for it) we offset the power consumption through planting some trees. Well, how many trees and how much land would this cost? And what about the thousands of computers we buy yearly from Dell or IBM? What about the plastics that go into the casings? And what about the companies that they buy the chips from and where do they buy the ore that's refined to make the silicon chips?
The more I taxed my brain with this possible carbon neutral proposition, the more it looked like this was going to require a lot of resources. Resources being money. And while we're doing this, some other IT company isn't and we're competing with them to do business with our customers. So my proposition might be passed around at the office as a joke until the CTO got ahold of it and thought about the shareholder and rejected it.
So before any of you say a carbon tax is stupid because consumers will start to buy the most environmentally friendly products, you're simply wrong. The only way they'll buy it is if the environment is having direct negative impacts on their business. And the irony is that if it does negatively affect their business that means lost profits. And lost profits means they'll have less money to spend on their solutions. So our environmentally friendly services with a carbon neutral company will probably be out of the question if they're more expensive. Tell me, when you buy your computer or your Xbox360/PS3/Wii or your new processor, does carbon neutrality figure into your pricing at all? I'll bet it doesn't.
And at the end of the day, my coworkers will tell me that there's X number of companies that are worse than us so I shouldn't even worry about it. Or that we don't even need to worry about that because it's the people who make our tools that should be conscious. But we do need to at least think about it. We might even need to worry about it more than others because we're the least obvious target yet the largest base of carbon output. Take Wal-Mart for example. Just look at the trucks they use for their distribution centers. 500 distribution centers across the states with probably thousands of stores--all of those places being supplied regularly from the coasts and producers by truck. Such an easy thing to overlook--especially if they contract those truckers because then it's not their fault, it's not their conscious and they can have articles hailing them as the greenest distribute in the world while the contractor doesn't care because they're doing business with the largest distributor in the world.
I'm not going to tell you whether or not a carbon tax is a good idea. I'm just going to ask you to tell me what scenario would have to go down for an entire industry to collectively switch to being carbon neutral. And I mean that everybody has to be on board because it will affect price. And when that price goes up, if it doesn't go up across the board, consumers will on average opt for the cheaper product. What would have to be happening to make that consumer stay away from non-carbon neutral compa
My work here is dung.
that attempts to reduce consumption of unsustainable energy is worth a shot. If people only respond to the cost of something - if it takes a tax that makes other solutions relatively cheaper - then it's worth investigating.
I am a firm believer in capitalism. The market will come up with a good solution.
But the market can only function if all costs involved are part of the price. One way to do this is to have a CO2 tax, provided it is based on the actual CO2 cost of the product, and the money is used to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Then the market can decide what to do.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
So are the many other ideas out there for reducing global emissions.
Ultimately they will all fail if China is not brought on board.
Australia is seeing massive drought and topsoil erosion due to boneheaded land-management schemes encouraged by the government. The Amazon basin is seeing largescale deforestation due to clearcutting for pastureland as well as hardwood harvesting for construction. Europe is vastly overpopulated and over-farmed that the net margins for farming have gone negative in areas accessible by car.
The only large land area that has not yet succumbed to land overuse is North America and that's mostly due to the sheer size of the land vs the population. At current consumption levels, a land teeming (as Europe teems) with people would consume the resources of the American landscape and pollute it past the point of no return. You know what that is? That's the point in a journey where it's harder to go back to the beginning than to continue on to the end. It's like when those astronauts got in trouble when they were going to the moon. Somebody messed up or something and they had to get them back to Earth but first they had to go around the moon. They were out of contact for hours. Everybody waited breathlessly to see if a bunch of dead guys in a can would pop out the other side. Well, we're just about to slide past the moon and there's only one country that can change our course.
China.
I pay enough taxes already. I own a decently efficient car, I ride a train to work (well, I drive 10 miles to the train station each day), and I don't drive much on weekends. If you're going to make a "carbon tax", make it for those assholes that commute 50 miles a day in a Ford Expedition. I have enough taxes already.
Comment of the year
At the moment, it's humans who are taxed, human work. Well, tax machine work instead. They do more of the work than we do and they have an unfair tax advantage over humans, never mind their ability to work so much faster.
http://www.whynot.net/ideas/2195
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how do you know how much CO2 is being dispensed by various companies? Do we seal plants in plastic baggies and measure the CO2 coming out? And what exactly would the tax revenue go towards?
No sane man would shoot himself in the foot.Tell that to people who were drafted to fight in wars and shot themselves in the foot to get out of having to kill other people.
Environmentalists hate the only real solution (nuclear power in case you're doubting that) even more.
It supposedly costs even more, because it costs "infinite" because of the supposed need to maintain storage infinitely. But that way of thinking just ignores progress completely.
And have you seen the movies about nuclear power ? Obviously it's evil !
At the very least, nuclear power can bridge the gap in energy supply until fusion power becomes available.
One of the leading campaigners in this area is George Monbiot, he has thought about how industrialised countries can make a 90% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030.
In a recent article entitled Here's the Plan he set out 10 steps to achieve this while changing our every day life as little as possible.
Instead of carbon tax he suggests:
This scheme would not penalise the poor as carbon taxes might because they would be able to sell off their surplus rations.
And let me tell you one thing: most big companies can afford to lose money for a couple of years in order to lower their pollution rate -- sure, it's going to be painful, but everyone will benefit in the log term. Oh, and no outsourcing polluting plants to poorer countries either: the tax should be levied globally, if necessary by using estimates. Outsourcing to, say, India, in order to pollute freely? Sorry, bub, all your plants in India are now considered as "high" or "extremely high pollution": that will US$ 45 million. On the other hand, extremely efficient and non-polluting industries will win.
Still ideally, I'd like the revenue from these taxes to be used to plant trees, create recycling and de-polluting plants, and optimize natural resource usage. Other worthy uses are scientific and technical: developing renewable resources and developing the technologies needed to clean behind us most of the pollutants we have been dumping on Earth for the past 100+ years.
The key point is this: whether you believe in Global Warming or not (I do) the fact is that the Earth is Dying(tm). If we don't force the big companies -- and the individual citizens -- to face up to this fact, all solutions we'll apply to this problem will be too little, too late. There are solutions available right now . Carbon Tax is one of them, and it's probably one of the most effective.
And... Wait for it... Creating new technologies and optimizing our resources consumption may actually increase the wealth of everyone, by creating new jobs and improving/cleaning our habitat.
Of course, I am not holding my breath: most politicians will never have the guts nor the gonads to sign a Carbon Tax into law. We'll probably come around to it once the Earth is so polluted and the climate so out of whack it will taxation or death.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
If you subtract those people who are receiving money from fossil fuel companies, then as far as I know there is a total consensus on this issue. In fact, even among those people who DO receive money from the fossil fuel companies, you'll find several scientists who admit that fossil fuel emissions are increasing the Greenhouse Effect. (Go to the bottom of this article and see Pat Michaels arguments against Global Warming. Basically it's that "That number [the amount of global warming] is significantly low, and it suggests to me that this becomes a self-limiting issue in the following way: 100 years from now, the technology that runs our society, and powers our society, is going to be radically different than it is today. It will almost certainly be a more efficient, maybe not even a carbon-based fuel society.")
Now, I know people will call this an ad hominem attack, but if it is, it's valid. Just as it was valid to point out that those scientists who denied that smoking was bad for were being funded by tobacco companies. I say it's valid because for the majority of people who don't actually understand the science themselves, they need to consider the biases of those who provide the information. One on hand you have scientists being largely funded by an administration that has very weak on climate issues, but who still find very strong evidence to support the greenhouse gas theory, and on the other hand you have scientists being funded by ExxonMobil and friends who try to find faults with those arguments. It's also worth pointing out that this same group of scientists first denied global warming was happening, then suggested that it's not due to greenhouse gases, and is now claiming that it's not really that big of a problem. So, if you don't understand the science, who do you believe?
Personally, I understand the science fairly well. But it's hard to convince those who don't understand it without pointing out to them why some scientists might be deceiving them (either deliberately or otherwise).
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Before anyone starts on about the need for a carbon tax, we need to address the Billions that go into subsidizing our consumption habits. I'm speaking of Americans in particular, beyond the war on "terror", highway funding, and preferential tax status of oil companies, we also directly subsidize these companies that are taking us for billions in retail.
I say eliminate all of the special subsidies, odd tax loopholes, and other artificial advantages that make Fossil fuel desireable. And then the market will finally be able to sort it all out.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
"If part of an industry that is (very) close to the cause of pollution suggests to take certain actions that mostlikely will cost them money in the short run, then you know something is wrong."
Or you know that car manufacturer runs a cleaner shop than their competitors and will benefit from such a tax. Don't ever think business has more than one goal. Sometimes it's worth it to pay a little more if it means your competitors will pay a lot more.
Actually I have.
No I did not get sick.
Neither did anyone who lived at more than 20 km from the plant. About 50 people lost their lives, due to completely disregarding safety procedures. Some number totaling about 2000 was "affected" in some way.
In comparison, when the Karahnjukar hydroelectric dam broke in China, 60000 people lost their lives, and the region is STILL not back to normal.
Accidents happen. Chernobyl happened because of massive disregarding of safety procedures, not because inherent "unsafety" of nuclear power.
Although the Bush administration has been far too quiet about it, what has been said by them mainly supports the position of non-ExxonMobil supported scientists - namely, that anthropogenic global warming is real. That said, their silence is almost deafening. Also, I did understand that your point was a lack of communication and am in no way suggesting that you are contributing to the misinformation. As such, it's a valid point as many scientists have a hard time communicating with the general populace, and our government doesn't seem to have the willpower to do the communicating, either.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The Kárahnjúkar hydroelectric dam is in Iceland, not China. And while there are strong objections from environmentalists, I also doubt that 60,000 people have died as a result of this project.
And this got modded up to +4 insightful?
Won't someone think of the trees????
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Perhaps you mean the Banqiao Dam?
W
By far the biggest hurdle to a carbon tax is convincing our tax-adverse populace to comply with a new tax. Just mentioning taxes is a show-stopper for most politicians. However, there is one phrase that is more evil to Joe 6-pak than "taxes", and that phrase is "income taxes". So, how about a revenue-neutral approach. Lower/eliminate the bottom of the income tax brackets while adding/raising taxes on carbon-based energy. Consumers pay less income taxes, but more at the pump. Joe 6-pak is happy because he gets a bigger paycheck. He pays more to gas up his 4-wheel drive extended supercab, but he blames the Arabs for that problem. He also knows that he can buy a Prius if he gets really tired of paying so much for fuel (although for cultural reasons, he will no longer be able to take his friends to NASCAR events).
Obviously, just about every product and service will increase in price because underlying energy costs will increase production costs. This will put market pressures on all industries to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels so they can gain competitive advantage. Meanwhile, smart consumers will be able to lower their overall tax bill while those of us who don't want to adapt will pay more taxes than we currently pay.
The increased costs of goods/services will be a drag on our economy, but that drag is coming sooner or later. It's just a sad fact of being so dependent upon a finite resource. I would rather pay a little more now and avoid the increasingly volatile energy fluctuations that will most certainly occur as fossil fuel supplies dwindle. Hopefully, the drag on the economy will be somewhat countered by increased spending for more efficient products as well as the growth of the alternate energy industry. To minimize the impact on the economy, the transition from income taxes to carbon taxes would have to be reasonably slow, maybe a 3% shift per year. Ten years from now, the average citizen would pay 30% less income taxes and 30% more carbon taxes.
The goal of the carbon tax is to reduce C02 creation, not to raise revenue. So don't make it do the latter. Collect the tax as specified (based on amount of C02 created), but then every year, every U.S. citizen gets a check -- 1/300,000,000 of the taxes collected. After all, we're the ones getting damaged by its creation!
Why is this good? First, it reduces the "it's just a tax increase in disguise" critics (who otherwise have a point.) This also lessens the argument about how much the tax should be, since most of it's "coming back" -- it's not the gov't trying to sneak in a tax increase. Second, think how fond many people are of their tax refund check, and here's a new (and guaranteed) one! (Sadly, casinos and the lottery office will do quite well on the day the checks arrive.) Third, if you do create carbon, you're paying for it, so it's no longer a class warfare/guilt trip issue, at least as far as CO2 is concerned.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.