1) A carbon tax is perhaps the most common proposed solution to the climate change problem. It would increase quality of life, not reduce choice nor induce rationing. Currently, burning carbon imposes externalities that are not paid by the emitter. This means that some of the carbon emitted is emitted even though it provides more costs than benefits. A carbon tax and dividend INCREASES economic efficiency by ensuring that CO2 is generated only when benefits exceed costs.
2) oil & gas are extremely useful for a lot of different things, and there's still a lot of it left in the ground. Technology improvements will only shift usage; it will still be used for something. Only a "stick" such as a carbon tax can ensure that such usage is efficient.
The point to remind people, or at least improve the message, is that the tax exposes the actual price of a good.
Right now, we pay for plastic or carbon expensive goods without caring about the cost of dealing with the costs of clean up, or forest fires/storms that cause huge damage.
Right now, it’s a lottery - cheap goods, no information, and everyone in the population is hoping their disaster ticket doesn’t get punched.
However, people prefer making choices intelligently - knowing what it costs to actually deal with a product means people can immediately make choices.
Things are already expensive, we just don’t know how much so.
At least this way, we can make informed choices about how we want to live our life- it empowers us.
I don't care about relating these two tings, because they are an intentionally weak straw-man chosen to hijack the discussion.
Carbon emissions are mostly from transportation and energy production - neither of which are goods. Both have more sustainable alternatives that a carbon tax would easily push people to use via market forces.
The relationship between tailpipe carbon emissions and temperature, and then sea-level rise, is absurdly strong scientifically speaking. Energy accounting is a very hard science. We know what IR bandwidths CO2 gas absorbs, and that translates directly to an additional heat flow. We are watching the northern sea ice disappear because of carbon emissions, and we will witness much more. The most stinging effects will be reduced agriculture output, direct temperature rise consequences, and sea-level rise. The consensus science on sea-level rise (see IPCC) results in extremely quantifiable economic damage within this century, and those are low-ball numbers. The confidence level is simply "confident". There is no reasonable question that things will be as-bad or worse than the consensus predictions. There are reasonable questions about low-probably chances that things will get much, much, worse.
In other words, the confidence level is 100%? As in, we can predict that certain catastrophic events will happen as a matter of fact, and reducing carbon emissions would prevent those events as a matter of fact?
No big decisions have a 100% confidence level, that's an absurd criteria. Catastrophic events are also a bad thing to look at because researchers tend to just stop the detailed simulations beyond a certain horizon (specifically 100 years) because so much changes in the human world on those time frames that people don't take it seriously. The vast majority of truly terrible things that will happen as global warming continues will happen past that time frame. At some point, the metabolism of the plant will draw down the CO2 concentration (if we stop emitting), and this is >1,000 year frame. 100 years tends to not be enough for terrible (and I mean like really truly truly terrible) things to happen due to thermal inertia.
We're going to have to engineer the climate directly if we still want to have an industrial society in 200 years. We will probably do it much sooner. The effects of the combination of more CO2 + artificially decreased sunlight are going to be bad, but are not well understood.
It is true, it's not a question of whether we have consequences or not, just a question of "how bad". That is extremely strongly a function of how much emissions we emit until, say 2050. It's hard for me to even imagine how we can continue using fossil fuels for energy much beyond then, so not reducing emissions also strikes me as kind of... needless self-inflicted harm.
I am not setting a threshold, I just want to estimate the objective confidence level in our predictions.
When you say 'It is not a question of whether we have consequences or not, just a question "how bad"', it sounds like 100% confidence, but then you say that it is not 100%. So is it more like >99%? Or 70%? Or 10%? Or <1%?
And more specifically, what is the probability that reducing anthropogenic emissions to a certain target would result in us averting the predicted catastrophic scenario that otherwise would not have been averted?
Sea levels are rising due to the melting of land ice. That's a historic fact, but predicts are concerned with how much it will rise. There is a chance that it will reverse, and before 100 sea level will actually fall. How much probably depends on what factors you allow yourself to consider. For example, I think the most likely reasons this would happen would be due to human geo-engineering or nuclear war. For that, maybe I'd give 0.01% chance. But for it to change course due to natural factors... I'll give 1.0e-6%. Because you know, about every 100M years sounds reasonable for a sudden violent and unprecedented climate movement in Earth's history. The reason this is so tremendously unlikely is because the climate is already hot enough to melt most of the ice, only reason it hasn't is because it takes time. It's a system that's moving on (an abstract form of) inertia.
> reducing anthropogenic emissions to a certain target would result in us averting the predicted catastrophic scenario that otherwise would not have been averted?
I honestly can't read this. Rising sea levels affects people... the more it rises the worse it is. At some point, the rise is catastrophic. The English language is not going to help say "at exactly 1.65 meter rise it becomes catastrophic".
Climate scientists can, and do, connect emissions scenarios to a sea level. It's a much more human activity to connect the change in environment given by a numerical metric to a moral judgement.
> A carbon tax is perhaps the most common proposed solution to the climate change problem. It would increase quality of life, not reduce choice nor induce rationing. Currently, burning carbon imposes externalities that are not paid by the emitter. This means that some of the carbon emitted is emitted even though it provides more costs than benefits. A carbon tax and dividend INCREASES economic efficiency by ensuring that CO2 is generated only when benefits exceed costs.
This paragraph strikes me as falling somewhere between wishful thinking and absolute gibberish.
Perhaps a carbon tax is a good idea but it only "increases economic efficiency" if you perform some sleight of hand by saying "if we keep emitting carbon economic production will drop off due to climate change". That kind of externality is highly theoretical.
There are things in the world that matter more than economic efficiency and if you want to argue that limiting carbon emissions will have a positive impact on some of those things, go ahead. I'm on board.
But I see this article, and your post, as people promising free lunches. And when people start offering free lunches, I get real skeptical. I am also skeptical of the ability of committees of experts to make decisions about economic efficiency. To me, this article has a disingenuous ring to it. It reads like people who've made up their mind and are inventing arguments to support their decision.
If there's so much money in "green living" then all of the people on the committee should quit their jobs and go into business. They can improve the world and make money at the same time instead of telling other people how to spend their money.
Yes, I'm arguing that doubling the price of gasoline with a carbon tax and dividend will increase economic efficiency. But claiming that doubling the price of gasoline is a "free lunch" doesn't pass the sniff test. :)
There are many ways we can improve our lives with collective action which cannot be done on the individual level. That's really bedrock to modern society. Virtually everything that you pay a tax for qualifies for this definition, and that amounts of a major fraction of total economic product.
You are others are also comparing apples and oranges. A carbon tax redistributes wealth, it does not destroy wealth, except (speculatively) in 1st or 2nd derivative effects.
If you had to pay $1,000 more per year on energy and got that much more back as a refund check, then yes, you are worse off. Presumably, you re-balance to use less energy. This leaves your spending in a more constrained state. That reduction of economic freedom might be worth -$50 to you, but not -$1,000.
Carbon tax is pure economic foolishness. Imagine there's one pipe with smoke coming out of it, and imagine there's another pipe with a lever. If you pull the lever, bags of money will come pouring out of the pipe. That's the carbon tax. The thinking is that the pipe with the smoke will stop belching, but it won't. There's no direct connection between the pipes. We HOPE drivers will drive less if the carbon tax hits their pocket book, but there is no guarantee. It's like changing the interest rate and hoping the economy will improve.
> There's no direct connection between the pipes. We HOPE drivers will drive less.
There are quite a few studies that show that this actually happens. You can have a look at Google Scholar if you want.
Don;t forget, its not just 'will drive less', it is 'will prefer lower carbon alternatives', etc. Fee and dividend basically makes it expensive to pollute and puts cash in consumers' pockets so that they can afford cleaner alternatives.
I think we should place a royalty on the pipelines, not the pumps. Take 10% from everything that flows down the pipeline, and use that money to drive us into the clean energy age. Where else are we going to get the funds to fix this enormous problem?
The problem with using consumer taxes to fund these things is that the consumer has to consume the planet in order to save the planet. If I don't pay enviro-levy taxes at the cash register, my district can't afford waste removal. If I don't buy enough gasoline, we won't collect enough carbon tax to pay for these wetlands we need to build.
> We HOPE drivers will drive less if the carbon tax hits their pocket book, but there is no guarantee.
Gasoline costs twice as much in India as the US, and the average income is far less. People drive a lot less, use public transport, build more densely, and purchase more economical vehicles - small cars, motorcycles, scooters. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) kits are very popular even on passenger cars (LNG being cheaper).
An SUV is virtually unheard of as a family car (unless you're a powerful politician, movie star, or other bigwig) and even a full-size sedan marks you out as rich. I've never seen a pickup truck being driven for passenger transportation.
Why do you think prices don't change behaviors? It's a pretty fundamental facet of human behavior.
> It's like changing the interest rate and hoping the economy will improve.
Don't central banks do exactly that? They cut rates in recessions (to promote spending) and increase them in boom times (to tamp down inflation).
1) A carbon tax is perhaps the most common proposed solution to the climate change problem. It would increase quality of life, not reduce choice nor induce rationing. Currently, burning carbon imposes externalities that are not paid by the emitter. This means that some of the carbon emitted is emitted even though it provides more costs than benefits. A carbon tax and dividend INCREASES economic efficiency by ensuring that CO2 is generated only when benefits exceed costs.
2) oil & gas are extremely useful for a lot of different things, and there's still a lot of it left in the ground. Technology improvements will only shift usage; it will still be used for something. Only a "stick" such as a carbon tax can ensure that such usage is efficient.