In countries where VAT tax exist, the whole chain of value pay a fraction of the added value they produce. It works with a differential between the VAT you bought vs the VAR you charged.
Why wouldn't we don't adopt a similar system for carbon? The fiscal framework would be very similar. This way a company wouldn't have to know how much carbon have been produced by its suppliers; it only need to count its own.
A far more streamlined implementation would be to simply apply a fee at resource extraction time on everything combustible taken out of the ground. It would do a little collateral taxation on carbon that ends up as unburnt plastics, but that's not necessarily a bad thing (if you want maximum accuracy, pay some back for non-degradable carbon upon reaching a landfill, the only form of sequestering that is used at scale)
Unfortunately I can't imagine how diplomacy could achieve something like that, given the extremely uneven distribution of resource extraction industries. Despite that it wouldn't even hurt the big oil nations, considering that they would not have a lot of difficulties passing on the cost to their buyers (assuming full global enforcement). The biggest logical opponents would not be oil/gas states like Saudi Arabia or Russia but those whose only domestic geological energy sources is carbon-inefficient coal.
(Edit: cleared up some illegible grammar and editing clutter)
> Unfortunately I can't imagine how diplomacy could achieve something like that, given the extremely uneven distribution of resource extraction industries.
You can still tax resource extraction industries in your country and importers of energy resources (if country of origin has lower carbon tax than your country).
This is already done for income tax. You are taxed on your foreign income but you can deduce the tax you already paid to foreign country.
This could impact your exports but with the money from carbon tax you could lessen the tax burden on manufacturers of your exports or even finance them directly.
..and forest fires, deforestation, land use, methane from rubbish dumps, methane from permafrost and a thousand other things.
Still adding a large carbon tax directly at the source gives us pretty much the best bang-for-the-buck. It would have to be combined with deforestation taxes too otherwise you'll see countries like Brazil go into overdrive to export "green fuel".
Methane is a powerful short term GHG, but long term only the CO2 left by decayed methane is relevant. Forest fires etc are completely temporary, contemporary trees are not geologically sequestered.
Every flat tax is fraught with issues. Now a huge number of people who can barely afford transportation simply can't anymore. So much has been spent subsidizing roads and by proxy suburbs over 70 years, and any plan will have to involve helping people trapped by those ciecumstances, or they will overturn those plans democratically.
In short, some people can afford to pay for climate change fixes, and some can't. Any solution will simply have to be progressive and have a fair, equal burden on everyone.
This is the beauty of carbon taxes - in addition to creating incentives to avoid carbon emissions, they raise revenue. That raised revenue can then be directly given back to people. Wether you do so according to 1/(number of people) or some means-adjusted distribution is an exercise i will leave to the voter.
If the goal is to reduce emissions, then a tax on emissions is the only solution. Anything else is too open to avoidance (just look at corporate tax avoidance).
Maybe there's other ways to make it better for the people who can't afford it - a tax free allowance they can claim back or similar.
I'm still not sure if this is feasible across borders though. How can you stop carbon tax havens?
There are only two ways to reduce transportation emissions: do less transportation or introduce less emitting ways of transportation. If the poor are exempt then everybody is exempt because more money can only mean more freedom of choice, not less.
Cabon and other "sin" taxes are a great way to influence change. However we should be lowering income and property taxes at the same time to help with these vested interests.
That's what BC did. Its ideologically conservative government at the time introduced a carbon tax going into general revenues, and lowered general taxes, so that the carbon tax is revenue-neutral.
An alarm bell goes off any time someone suggests lowering PROPERTY taxes... ugh. Property taxes should be way higher in most parts of the world to disincentivized speculation.
Yeah my local town removed property tax for new development. In fact, they instituted a TIF (tax incentive fund?) which means the developer gets the property taxes free and clear for new buildings. The city is going broke, but the council is dominated by developer-sponsored shills so its hard to fix.
> However we should be lowering income and property taxes at the same time to help with these vested interests.
What makes you think they need to allow a carbon tax for that? They seem to be doing fairly well at lowering those how they want to without any concessions?
Yes. Unfortunately it's much easier to get supported for green boondoggles that cost the government a lot of money for little gain; than for a money-spinning carbon tax.
Do you have a better idea how to convey the information about true cost of action to the market? You can't let it assume the cost is 0 like it did for last 200 years.
As others have suggested, a corresponding decrease in income and corporate tax such that you get a revenue neutral framework with no additional wasteful government spending would be supported by many, including those on the right. This may also have an additional effect on neutralizing any downwards economic impact from the carbon taxation.
VAT is a total administrative PITA, I would hate to see any additional systems modeled on it.
I founded a start-up in Europe, and most of my accounting costs are recovering VAT on business expenses. There's an argument that VAT is an efficient tax because businesses basically have to self administer it, but my take is that the cost is hidden because the burden is pushed onto business.
Depends on the VAT system. In New Zealand you can almost count the VAT (GST) exceptions on one hand (most land/property, bank charges, and goods/services that are exported), everything else supplied domestically has one flat rate of 15%.
Compare this to the UK, where there's massive sets of exclusions and several different rates in force. Takeaway vs dine-in food, digital vs physical books, ... a total mess.
> A carbon tax is also an indirect tax—a tax on a transaction—as opposed to a direct tax, which taxes income. A carbon tax is called a price instrument, since it sets a price for carbon dioxide emissions.[22] In economic theory, pollution is considered a negative externality, a negative effect on a third party not directly involved in a transaction, and is a type of market failure.
The general idea is that the tax income will be shared between all adult citizens of the country in the form of a cheque from the government.
It's a very progressive tax and will be extremely effective. Which is why the neo-Republicans have fought against it (despite it originally being an old-Republicans idea).
>It's a very progressive tax and will be extremely effective.
anything the government gets their greasy hands on instantly becomes the most inefficient and cost overrun thing on the face of the earth. Hasn't their track record proven it by far and large?
Just the government? Private sector is way better at overrunning services that everybody needs with unnecessary cost and deforming them to extract even more money. Like US healthcare, US prison system, US bail bonds ... basically any US public service that is not run by the government (but financed with some sort of involuntary payment from people).
We need combustibles to become more expensive (because markets don't act well if the true cost is hidden) and government is actually the only entity that can do that, that has a chance of not bleeding us dry and creating bloodsucking monstrosity in the process.
No, not at all. Or at least not until you get the big private contractors involved. Or until you get, say, the spoilt toff of a London Mayor (Johnson, now PM) throwing away $60m on a "garden bridge" project.
The day-to-day stuff is generally more efficient: that's why the US's private healthcare system is extremely expensive when compared to the UK's public healthcare system (evan at times when the latter was properly funded).
No, actually that track record is not nearly as consistent as you seem to think. Many government projects throughout history have and continue to be very effective.
Those are references to Microsoft PAC which is funded by small donations from thousands of employees. Folks sometimes donate small amounts because they can go to events where interesting speakers are invited like Michael Lewis, Phil Knight, Will Smith, Chelsea Clinton, Arianna Huffington etc. As an employee, you do not have a say in capital allocation. In fact the PAC donates to both sides. The only agenda historically is what is in Microsoft’s corporate interests from taxation policies to h1bs etc. Representatives didn’t always fall cleanly into either camp. For example, while McConnell might be a climate denier he might have supported a favorable taxation policy, rural broadband policy or h1b policy. Perhaps Schumer supported favorable h1b policies but not corporate tax policies so he would be allocated capital proportionally.
Such corporate-managed PACs should be made illegal.
I may not be able to come up with the perfect solution myself, but I'm sure there is a way to maintain regular people's ability to organize and even donate politically without having greedy corporate interests take over such entities. Politicians should work to find that solution and ban everything else.
There is just so much wrong with the U.S. electoral system, it's hard to even know where to start. Money in politics, the FPTP system (which also helped the pro-Brexit party in UK win the most seats again, despite the majority of votes going to anti-Brexit parties), electoral college, antiquated caucus system in primaries, all the technical obstacles that two parties have set against independents and third-parties to ensure they never have a real shot and that the real status-quo is maintained (permanent war, helping their wealthy friends, spying on everyone, keeping citizens in the dark about the real issues, etc).
The quoted article says they donated a total of $22K dollars to misc representatives. If I'm not mistaken, that wasn't even the company, but the PAC making those small donations. I'd even go as far as to say those donations seems insignificant relative to this $1B investment.
Feels a bit like you might be throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Does this surprise you? What should they do when a politician is an aligned with them 90%? Do you only support or vote for local and federal politicians that share your values on every single issue?
Does not surprise me. Just wanted to clarify that the Microsoft donates to X line is a lot more nuanced than the monolithic portrayal by OP
So employees donate money to a fund that they then don’t have a say in and for reasons that might be as unrelated as wanting to get good seats for a talk by Phil Knight.
This independent org then donates across party lines to issues that the manager believes are aligned with corporate interests that may also conflict with other corporate interests such as green initiatives and LGBTQ issues since a republican senator might be for rural broadband access but not gay marriage.
There was also an internal movement to try and starve the PAC by not donating to it.
And TBC, throwing a wrench in this even more, from a pure money perspective we’re talking about tens - hundreds of thousands vs. 1 billion.
Really, my point is that, like any large organization, a manichean view of things is not sufficiently nuanced and does a disservice to the complexity intrinsic with large groups of people.
The company also exists of employees and shareholders. The PAC is administered by the corporation, has meetings on corporate grounds, is contributed to by the corporation, and has its contribution list published by the corporation. In anything other than a legal sense, the corporation runs the PAC.
The also just secured a $10 Billion contract with the US military, which is one of the largest emitters of carbon on the planet.
Americans have been reticent to downsize the military for the benefit of everyone else on the planet, but we might just get around to it for our own benefit in reducing emissions.
Awesome! What have people seen from the performance of these types of corporate venture capital funds?
I'm guessing a lot of it will go towards carbon neutral, but I'm most excited about the carbon removal pieces like Direct air capture, carbon to value, and underground carbon storage.
If you had $1B for carbon negative tech, where would you invest it?
I have no idea about the economics, though, maybe it's just not feasible without subsidies.
Edit: Why? Because the technique is simple, biomass is relatively cheap, you get electricity and heat you can sell in a cold climate, and that terra preta example makes me envious, as someone interested in gardening. If the char was cheap enough, I would want to buy lots of it myself. Helping the planet and helping my own plants.
I think you need a large scale plant to keep costs down. There are large scale biomass power plants where I live, but they specialize in burning everything, so some investment is needed.
I have a client in the biochar industry. They manufacturer "machines" or furnaces to produce biochar, as well as sell it directly. https://newenglandbiochar.com
Using biochar in your garden, on your lawn etc. is a great way to sequester some carbon at a small scale.
I agree with the biochar suggestion, but I'd also suggest to bury both biochar and syn-oil deep in the ground -- at least, in the first decades or so. That's because I don't believe the usual sales pitch for biochar actually works.
Biochar as a soil amendment is not a reliable means to increase yields. Depending on the produce and the soil, it decreases yields. Sometimes, it seem to have no effect, at all. So far, the most reliable results have been observed in tropical areas. People there don't have the money to invest in farm land, yet.
Refining syn-oil is hard, because its quality is low -- comparable to bunker oil. Tar is one of the few products that can be made out of it, successfully.
Therefore, burying both seem to be the best option. After all, there should be quite a few depleted oil fields and coal mines in the world, so space is not a problem.
> If you had $1B for carbon negative tech, where would you invest it?
Renewable energy and electric transport.
Trying to pull carbon out of the atmosphere is like trying to pull salt out of water. It is far easier and less costly to avoid putting the salt there in the first place.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be invested in carbon extraction, but so long as we have large carbon emissions then the most efficient place for money to go is towards eliminating those. Cleanup should be secondary.
I see that a lot stated as a general rule, but in reality it depends. Have you ever looked on how many people are employed on taking salt out of sea water?
Sure, for most of the carbon we emit, it's easier to stop emitting it. But not all. We won't reach neutrality by cutting emissions alone.
Besides, we will need to take carbon out of the air to fix the climate after we stop breaking it.
What I'm saying is that there is a lot of low hanging fruit to pluck. A 1 billion dollar solar plant could generate revenue to fund research while cutting emissions. A 1 billion dollar solar plant wouldn't eliminate all carbon output, not by a long shot.
It's a real action that could be done in less than a few years.
Until we get to a point where more solar doesn't decrease carbon output, more solar is the way to go.
You know, the lowest hanging fruit right now isn't even energy generation. It is on insulating/ventilation of buildings. Despite that all the action is on energy generation, and for good reasons. The only of the low hanging problems that we really solved is illumination, and that took many years after we got a solution that was better than the older tech on every single way.
The same way, we can't wait for the generation problem to be solved before we start exploring the solutions for capture. We have to do everything all the time; just not with the same intensity.
I would also add here carbon dioxide extraction for carbon burning electricity plants. This carbon dioxide can be then used locally to grow new fuel for the plant.
Heck yeah! We worked with Carbon Engineering on our first carbon negative product (a planter pot). And we're working with Climeworks on our carbon negative bracelet: http://gonegative.co
Tito- very cool! Just looked through your website and your Indiegogo. I'm at the tail end of a PhD so don't have much disposable income at the moment, but will support it when I do.
Are you going to make planters again? I hope so! Even if you aren't, I'm curious what the price was for them.
they can grow nanotubes with simple electrolysis, and the only inputs are electricity and co2. They've got a version that works in a gas plant's exhaust, and a version that's completely solar. It's still early - like, hand-assembled by grad students early - but I cannot imagine that this is not going to be revolutionary
and and and you can use carbon-negative nanotubes as ingredients in other building materials, which makes them stronger, so you need less of it, so you emit less co2 making (for example) concrete: https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.gwu.edu/dist/d/73/files/...
(sorry for multireplies but this concept is just so exciting to me)
I think carbon to value is the best way. If valuable uses for carbon are found companies will work on carbon capture themselves without political purpose.
One of the most important aspects IMO is the attitude they take:
> "While we at Microsoft have worked hard to be 'carbon neutral' since 2012, our recent work has led us to conclude that this is an area where we’re far better served by humility than pride," wrote Smith in the blog. "And we believe this is true not only for ourselves, but for every business and organization on the planet."
As a direct answer, a few friends built Project Wren to do exactly this! You can offset your own carbon footprint (or some multiple of it) and gift offsets to others. They went through YC this summer and are doing great work to make this easy and transparent.
There are multiple non-profits selling carbon offsets, usually at very reasonable prices. But it's not a regulated industry and the science behind this kind of analysis is complicated. None of them are selling simple products like "yes, we absolutely sequestered this much CO2 on an energy budget of this many MWh", so whether or not their projects "work" depends on proving how long their forests will stand, etc... There's serious worry that these organizations do more harm than good by significantly overstating their net offsets.
Really the only verifiable solution to carbon output is going to be reductions in net production.
You can significantly change your lifestyle and decision making process that will lead to behaviours that reduce your footprint.
... or were you looking for an answer like "buy some carbon offsets"?
I really don't want to pick on the parent comment, but the question seems like "Is there an easy way to effect meaningful, systematic change?"
I hear a lot of people talking about this and related issues but the things they propose are just not going to get it done. No one wants to stop traveling, drive less, eat local produce all winter, give up a globalized supply chain and their current lifestyle; meanwhile the frog is being slowly boiled alive...
I discussed this with a coworker the other day - buying carbon offsets is a good way of pricing convenience vs urge to do good in the environment.
He drives to work every day, because taking the bus is a hassle/takes time, etc. What's the value to him of taking the bus? Helping the environment in some unspecified way. If he pays for carbon offsets for his driving, he can now say "hey, taking the bus saves me $x/month, I think that's (not) worth it".
Hear hear! I feel like carbon offsets are basically the contemporary version of Catholic indulgences. Don't change your behavior one iota, but still feel guilt-free because you've paid for your forgiveness.
It's incredible how hard it is to motivate people to change their behaviors even just a little. Even just tiny things like convincing people to grab a real glass from the cabinet to get water instead of a single-use plastic cup on top of the water cooler at work seem impossible.
>climate change itself. Its negative consequences—such as drought and heat stress—would likely overwhelm any direct benefits that rising CO2 might offer plant life.
Climate Change is a buzzword, without going into the whole debate, the earth has and always will go through a series of warming and cooling, it happens to all of the planets within our own solar system, and even our own sun. Like the grand solar minimum.
>Rising CO2’s effect on crops could also harm human health. “We know unequivocally that when you grow food at elevated CO2 levels in fields, it becomes less nutritious,”
Yes but glyphosate and heavy metals in the atmosphere that rains down on the soil and a steady amount of lead water hydrating the crops are just fine and dandy
>Humans also require water to survive. That doesn't stop tsunamis from killing people.
Yes, but earthquakes cause tsunamis, and what causes the earthquakes? elevated levels of Co2? No it comes from a mixture of reasons, a diminishing magnetic field in the earths atmosphere, and a constant bombardment of solar winds that pound into the magma of the earth causing it to shift around
This is the most garbled attempt to hand-wave away science that I've seen for a while.
> Climate Change is a buzzword,the earth has and always will go through a series of warming and cooling.
Wrong on it being a buzzword, correct on the Earth going through natural cycles. However you may find this video enlightening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5hs4KVeiAU in terms of CO2's role with respect to other factors.
> Yes but glyphosate and heavy metals in the atmosphere that rains down on the soil and a steady amount of lead water hydrating the crops are just fine and dandy
Errr - no? Just because one thing is bad, doesn't mean that something else can also be bad.
Regarding your suggestion that earthquakes are caused by
> a diminishing magnetic field in the earths atmosphere, and a constant bombardment of solar winds that pound into the magma of the earth causing it to shift around
Where are you getting this stuff? certainly not from science books. Is there a Youtube channel somewhere that you are using to inform yourself? If so, you might want to work through this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL82yk73N8eoX-Xobr_TfH...
> the earth has and always will go through a series of warming and cooling
This is a devastatingly ignorant attempt to handwave away the damage.
Warming and cooling changes, prior to the widespread use of hydrocarbon fuels, have taken place over tens/hundreds of thousands of years, with very few exceptions. Civilizations and species can adapt on these timescales. They can not adapt to the changes that we have already brought about, and they will not be able to adapt to the changes that will occur within the next hundred years.
The earth absolutely goes through periods of warming and cooling, and has for billions of years. The issue we're encountering now is the speed of the change. Existing ecosystems can't adapt and move, like they typically do. Human societies also struggle to adapt. We unfortunately deeply depend on stability of climate - our national borders and economies and agricultural systems have a high inertia to change.
I suspect that you don't believe that current CO2 levels actually change the climate noticeably. I'd encourage you, and anyone agreeing with your comments, to spend a bit of time looking at scientific papers that may contradict that view. No politics, no bias, just the data. It doesn't hurt to read opposing views every now and then. I find it rather satisfying.
Just as humans require a differently level of manure and water to plants, we are also at our best with a different level of CO2.
The optimal CO2 level isn’t even constant between plants, but at the upper end “good for plants” is the same as “makes humans 25% worse in memory speed/accuracy tests”.
I would like to see the information that backs this up, and see if it can be replicated in many controlled scenarios and not just some think thank that cherry picks data to push a narrative. If a human was left alone in a chamber pumped full of elevated levels of CO2 i could see how humans would be less cognitive, but you have to remember there would also be higher levels of oxygen, which promotes brain growth and function
I'd agree being in a room pumped with CO₂ would significantly deteriorate cognitive functions, but I have a feeling the studies are overblown WRT climate change.
Humans have high adaptability to increased CO₂ loads (see e.g. freedivers), but adaptation takes time. The studies usually deal with temporary CO₂ increases / O₂ decreases, often in way higher concentrations like 1-10%, whereas a couple percent atmospheric CO₂ would already burn us to a crisp (figuratively).
Thanks, seems I've missed a decimal. My questionable sources[1][2] mention concentrations up to 14000 ppm = 1.4% and seem to disagree whether going higher cognitive decline plateaus or it becomes harmful.
Seems there is merit for concern, though I stand by my claims of cognitive effects probably being more temporary than permanent.
Moving to a high carbon atmosphere COULD be a good thing. You’re right!
But in nature there is a concept of a “disturbance”. This is a hole that opens up in an ecosystem, caused by fire, famine, violence, etc. These disturbances are a necessary part of the succession of species, which itself is an important part of ecosystem health.
HOWEVER, you can’t ignore the dimension of time. There is a FREQUENCY of disturbances which becomes destructive. Too many disturbances in too short a time results in the ecosystem being set back in time, hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years.
That’s the danger of climate change. Not that it happens, but that it happens too fast for ecologies to survive.
> known eugenicist who wants to reduce the population of the world
I suspect in a generation or two the fear of eugenics will be seen as quaint, because we'll all be editing our genes to improve them. I also don't see anything wrong with the idea of reducing the population, I mean, birth control is seen as a fundamental right pretty much everywhere, and every extra mouth to feed has an impact, no matter how much we refine our technology.
If the "known eugenicist" is who I think it is, then he isn't.
The general idea, as explained by the late Hans Rosling, is that if you educate people (including girls) and help them to lead better lives then they will naturally have fewer children. They do this of their own free will.
Rosling says: "only by raising the living standards of the poorest can we check population growth". [1]
If there is a very high probability that half your children will die before they grow up, then it makes sense to have twice as many children. If you expect every child to grow up and thrive, you won't do that.
This has already happened in most developed countries, with no eugenics and no eugenicists involved. Most people in the west now have fewer children than their grandparents had.
I really don't see a problem with less-developed countries enjoying exactly the same sort of progress as we've already had.
It's disappointing to see colossal amounts of money like this isn't used to address demonstrable human suffering happening all over the world right now. Microsoft could take this money, set up shop in Haiti, and develop over the course of a generation a tech sector in a country whose main export is t-shirts. They might even eventually make enough return to reinvest in other areas and bring the rest of the world up to first world standards.
Instead, this money is going to pool in upper class first world green economies as they use it to buy expensive electric cars, install expensive solar panels, and fund expensive climate change activists. That their efforts might slightly reduce the number of hurricanes in a hundred years is little consolation to the thousands of lives lost every decade in that country to natural disasters and disease, otherwise be preventable if the population wasn't living in shanty towns.
> buy expensive electric cars, install expensive solar panels, and fund expensive climate change activists
Studies indicate that dealing with the effects of climate change is going to be far more expensive than averting it in the first place. This "expense" is an illusion.
> little consolation to the thousands of lives lost every decade in that country to natural disasters and disease
Climate change is also going to cause tremendous human misery in the form of floods, fires, increased temperatures, harvest failures, and so on. Places like Haiti are going to be the worst hit.
There is no reason philanthropy cannot be used to tackle multiple issues at once. I'm not sure there is a lot value in deriding one cause over another. We need to address both issues.
I just looked up the cost for my home for solar on Google's project Sunroof. It would cost me $14,000 upfront, after the personal tax incentives (tax $$) and some ungodly amount of tax-assisted R&D ($$$), and it will save me $8,000 over 20 years. It looks more like a dollar going into a dumpster fire to me.
You’re in the USA? If so, your permit and installation costs are the single largest part of the whole thing. The actual panels and inverters are cheap, utility-scale PV is cheap even in the USA, and even home solar is cheap when the government isn’t getting in your way — my parents and my in-laws in the UK (the entirety of which is north of the entire contiguous USA and which is not known for lacking building regulations) have PV systems which each cost about half your quote and which generate about £1,000/year each.
The cost of solar is now about half what they spent.
A well-done rooftop solar installation in 2020 will last you more like 30 years. That $8,000 comes after the payback period, meaning you end up with a 60% ROI.
Solar isn’t expensive any more. Prices have fallen so much it’s now one of the cheapest forms of electricity — the kind of thing someone living in a shanty town might want to install to replace a sooty diesel generator or an easily broken kerosene lamp.
And if nobody does anything, in a generation the main export will be refugees.
Batteries are also cheap now. Heck, if you’re talking about literal shanty towns, a bag of rocks on a chain attached to a dynamo bolted to the ceiling can store enough energy to be useful.
Could you have said the same thing about going to space many decades ago? Yet, with hindsight, we can see going to space had a huge return on investment.
Why wouldn't we don't adopt a similar system for carbon? The fiscal framework would be very similar. This way a company wouldn't have to know how much carbon have been produced by its suppliers; it only need to count its own.