undefined

[-]

Where does the chain end? I burn diesel in my tractor to harvest corn. Should the feedlot that buys my corn pay for the tractor’s emissions? Should the slaughterhouse that processes the cattle pay? Should the supermarket that stocks the beef pay? Should the family who grills the steak on Sunday pay? Or just the one who eats the largest portion?

[-]

You either tax the fuel and pass the cost down to the consumers, or decide as a society to share the cost of the externalities and use general taxation for that.

by mullingitover2 hours ago|

[-]

Why should all of society pay for these externalities? If some people manage to improve their energy supply and don't require dirty fuels, why should they be forced to subsidize those who won't?

Taxing the carbon at the source is simply correctly pricing it, and because it makes it impossible to shift the externalities away from the producer it fixes the accounting problem that falsely makes fossil fuels appear cheap.

by pants22 hours ago|

[-]

Here, in the first scenario it directly punishes consumers for consuming more. In the second, it punishes everyone equally on everyone's consumption, which is unlikely to lead to behavior change. So yes, we should tax fossil fuels much more.

[-]

However, the first scenario will pass the increased cost of fuel down to the consumers affecting poorer people disproportionately. Example: some good that is produced with fossil fuels (including food) will become too expensive for low-income people, while richer (and more polluting) people will not feel the difference that much.

If you go for general taxation, you distribute the cost proportionally to income, making rich people pay more. Probably the ideal is a mix of both.

by pants21 hours ago|

[-]

Ideally in the first scenario where we have well-functioning government, necessities like food and low-income housing would be well subsidized. Other things like random junk from Temu and large gas-guzzling trucks will be less accessible to poorer people by design.

by _alternator_2 hours ago|

[-]

So… it’s like you completely understand the issue :)

And obviously, you tax the fuel at the source, right when it comes out of the ground. Higher prices get passed down, changing behavior because the products externalities are priced correctly from the start.

by derektank1 hours ago|

[-]

To be clear, the source would still be the consumer. Hydrocarbons can be used for non-CO2 emitting purposes such as chemical feedstock for pharmaceuticals, solvents, etc. We should only be levying a tax upon uses that emit CO2 into the atmosphere, i.e. burning them in your ICE vehicle. It’s not the fracking company that’s emitting the CO2 (unless they’re gas flaring or similarly emitting carbon during extraction but this is a rounding error on total emissions).

[-]

You can. Everything- including basic things like food, transportation, construction, healthcare- will become more expensive, of course. My objection was to ask fossil fuel companies to pay after you already bought and burned your fuel cheap.

by danny_codes1 hours ago|

[-]

I want the emitter to be taxed however much it would cost the market to put the carbon back.

Obviously in such a system there wouldn’t be any fossil fuel companies so it’s a moot point.

But this isn’t purely economic. Fossil fuel companies are paying top dollar to ensure we destroy the climate. Just look at all the batshit propaganda around climate change. People genuinely believe it’s not a problem. It’s wild how effective the fossil fuel industry has been in convincing people the sky isn’t falling

by EGreg3 hours ago|

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRnUY6V2Knk

[-]

No, what we wanted for decades is for cars to shift to the free market of electric energy, just like every one of our other appliances have for decades. Electricity is a free market - can be generated by hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, even nuclear. If tomorrow they invent clean fusion power then electric cars would be able to benefit.

The cars being locked into fossil fuels is the result of fossil fuel subsidies from the government. Otherwise, OPEC raising prices would have long ago led to improvements in battery technology and electric cars. But the federal government shields the fossil fuels companies to make sure the “price at the pump” is small.

We should be raising pigovian taxes on fossil fuels at the point of extraction, and redistribute it to all our citizens as a UBI. Alaska has been doing this for decades and they have almost the lowest GINI index of all states year after year.

Just like we want bottling and clothing companies to shift from plastics to bidegradeable materials. But you like to keep individuals distracted and blame them for using a straw and a bag, as if THAT is the main cause of pollution. And plastic recycling was a total scam designed to keep people distracted from forcing change on corporations pollution and unsustainable practices upstream.

by Ygg22 hours ago|

[-]

Pretty sure those poor multi billion companies also got huge subsidies.

by aaronbrethorst3 hours ago|

[-]

Neat, I’ve never seen a fossil fuel company exec on hacker news before. Welcome!

by aoeusnth13 hours ago|

[-]

I'm an environmentalist and I agree with this framing. The solution is going to be painful and must increase prices on products and services that fossil fuels are currently the cheapest solution for. If you're not willing to personally sacrifice anything to reduce fossil fuel consumption you can see why carbon taxes are not popular, right? France's protests against them, for example, are a good example of a populist reaction against attempts to regulate the economy to have less emissions.

by thesuitonym3 hours ago|

[-]

The amount of fossil fuels that a working class individual burns are a rounding error compared to what big companies burn. How many private jets are in the air right now? Even if you drive the most energy inefficient truck ever produced, run your home HVAC at max, and buy gasoline just to burn in your back yard, you will never measure up. It's like saying we need to dry the oceans, so you should stop peeing in it.

by 2III72 hours ago|

[-]

And who are the customers of big companies driving the demand? Regular people or other companies who also produce for those people.