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Elon Musk: 'We Need a Revolt Against the Fossil Fuel Industry' (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla's chief executive Elon Musk has accused politicians of bowing to the "unrelenting and enormous" lobbying power of the fossil fuel industry, warning that a global "revolt" may be needed to accelerate the transition to more sustainable energy and transport systems. Speaking at the World Energy Innovation Forum at the Tesla Factory in California, Musk claimed that traditional vehicles and energy sources will continue to hold a competitive edge against greener alternatives due to the vast amounts of subsidies they receive. The solution to this energy dilemma, Musk says, is to introduce a price on carbon by defining a tax rate on greenhouse gas emissions or the carbon content of fossil fuels. "The fundamental issue with fossil fuels is that every use comes with a subsidy," Musk said. "Every gasoline car on the road has a subsidy, and the right way to address that is with a carbon tax. Politicians take the easy path of providing subsidies to electric vehicles, which aren't equal to the applied subsidies of gasoline vehicles. It weakens the economic forcing function to transition to sustainable transport and energy."
Carbon tax hurts _you_, the consumer, not companies who are passing their costs to you
It's not intended to hurt the companies. It's intended to alter the market by making a particular product more expensive, and thus less enticing. Other products can then compete better on price and thus become more enticing.
A subsidy or tax break can have a similar type of effect but in the opposite direction.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Problem with cost per megawatt is that it ignores all the externalised costs. Healthcare to deal with the effects of pollution is expensive and very long term. How do you value all the energy saved having to vacuum homes or replace filters less often?
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You make an assertion with no proof whatsoever
There are many studies of bird deaths from windmills, including this meta-study. Windmills kill a few hundred thousand birds a year. Very few of those are from endangered species. By comparison, several BILLION are killed by domestic cats, and many millions die from collisions with buildings.
Objecting to windmills because they "kill birds" is idiotic, and even the people that raise that issue don't really believe it is valid. They just aren't bright enough to think of a more rational objection.
If you believe that polluters should pay for the damage they cause, and if you believe that CO2 emissions impose a nonzero cost on the environment, then ending the fossil fuel subsidies is just not sufficient reparation.
And if the carbon tax were revenue-neutral as many advocate, then if the tax were $50 per ton of CO2 and the average person creates 20 tons per year, then everyone would receive back $1,000 no matter how much CO2 they created. The average person who makes no change to their lifestyle would be no better or worse off, the poor who use less energy would get a windfall, and the wealthy who do more flying and have bigger homes to heat and cool would pay more in taxes than they receive back. So a revenue-neutral carbon tax would transfer wealth from the rich to the poor, not the other way around.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.