The fact that we are headed toward refugee crisis and Miami being underwater doesn't change the incentives and game theory aspect of it. If emissions are expensive to remove and there is no way to globally ensure that nearly everybody pays for their emissions then nobody is going to pay for any of their emissions and will just invest in mitigating the problems locally even if that's not the globally optimal solution. Any country that tries to make its people pay the actual cost of their emissions without the rest of the world doing the same will quickly see regime change because people aren't gonna waste a bunch of resources pissing in the wind like that.
If emission are cheap to remove then it's going to be easier to get everyone to pay and the fact that some "emissions havens" won't pay will be a non issue because picking up the slack will be cheap enough. In order to tax emissions at what it costs to dispose of them the cost of disposing of them needs to be cheaper.
(Of course both of us are making the assumption that taxing emissions at the cost of disposing of them will solve the problem which isn't guaranteed because nations will be tempted to use that money on other things but I think we can continue using that assumption for the time being.)
> Any country that tries to make its people pay the actual cost of their emissions without the rest of the world doing the same will quickly see regime change because people aren't gonna waste a bunch of resources pissing in the wind like that.
Yes it is the classic tragedy of the commons scenario, and frequently that is the argument brought up whenever countries talk about climate change action. "Why should I reduce my emissions if China/India/United States doesn't". That is certainly a hurdle to correctly pricing CO2 emissions but I don't know that the hurdle is insurmountable or that that the hurdle won't get lower with time. We've seen a lot more popular support behind climate change action in just the last 2 or 3 years. Even then, in order for us to meet the challenge we have to start making the argument to people that we can either experience temporary discomfort now, or massive misery in the future. I think the average person really doesn't grasp the severity of the threat, so it makes it very difficult for them to make that value judgement.
> If emission are cheap to remove then it's going to be easier to get everyone to pay and the fact that some "emissions havens" won't pay will be a non issue because picking up the slack will be cheap enough. In order to tax emissions at what it costs to dispose of them the cost of disposing of them needs to be cheaper.
Clearly we should be pursuing carbon sequestration technology and trying to find ways to make it cheaper.
Maybe right now, today, pricing in the full cost of carbon removal in a fossil fuels tax wouldn't be economically viable. But at the very least, we should be pricing in some significant portion of it if possible. That is a political question that will have to be played out in countries across the globe.
The answer to the "Why should I, if someone else isn't doing as good a job?" : It is our collective planet. It is on each of us to own the entire problem and lead.
I disagree and feel that it is you who are missing the point. While I agree removal of CO2 needs to be less expensive, we simply don't have an option right now. We do have an option to make it more expensive to pollute until we figure that out. Why do you directly relate carbon taxes to a reduction in living standards??
If you're a suburban citizen/voter who relies on a car to get to work/stores/school and on hydrocarbons for home-heating in the winter, the immediate impact of a carbon tax (without mitigatory measures) is to increase your expenses. That generally leads to reduced living standards.
I agree that properly pricing carbon emissions is essential, but one should not overlook the short-term impact. I remember the original Kyoto agreement, which seemed impossible at the time; in hindsight, the negotiators could have done us greater good by adopting a quantitative pathway that even the developing countries agreed was possible. Beginning to price carbon emissions, even a little, will have real impact.
The most thermodynamically-efficient way to deal with carbon in the atmosphere is to keep it in the ground. Furthermore, when we burn hydrocarbons and sequester CO_2, we remove oxygen from our atmosphere.
>We do have an option to make it more expensive to pollute until we figure that out
I'm saying that option only exists on paper because invoking it in any capacity that actually imposes enough cost to make people reduce polluting by a meaningful amount is going to met with too big a backlash to be sustainable.
>Why do you directly relate carbon taxes to a reduction in living standards??
Because anything that raises cost across all goods and at every step of every supply chain reduces living standards because people will simply be able to afford less goods and services at their new prices. That people will have to do things like turn down the A/C and eat out less in order to make ends meet. Individually those aren't big deals but they have follow on effects, the HVAC guy and the restaurant get less business. Those apply through the entire economy compounding the problem. There are also a lot of people who are going to be pushed over standard of living "cliffs" so to speak. The increased cost will be the difference between living in an air conditioned apartment or not. You apply the former type of changes across the entire economy you'll piss everyone off. You sprinkle in the latter and you've got a regime change on your hands. The only way an across the board standard of living decrease like that is tolerated is when it is overwhelmingly consensual (see WW2 mobilization).
I agree we need to do something but what? It's a real shit situation. Doing nothing is bad. Doing a token "something" doesn't help. Doing something that actually helps is not sustainable. Either climate change has to get worse or solving it has to get cheaper before we as a society can (uncontroversial) justify the level of resource allocation that will be required to make a meaningful difference.
Agree with you completely. A simplistic way of pointing this out is that EVERY tax and every cost regressively effects the poor more. If you are close to break-even, or you have negative surplus already, then additional cost is always worse for those who are worse off.
The alternative is to levy large taxes on corporations who pollute, that come only after payroll expense. Then, you could create a progressive deduction where pollution taxes were zero for low income earners, while after some threshold everyone was taxed for polluting.
It's unsatisfactory because the government hates earmarking specific income for specific outcomes and they much prefer the slush fund approach (for not entirely bad reasons). But, if pollution taxes specifically were spent on buying CO2 sequestration products which were deemed effective by the NSF or some other group, we might be able to create a non-regressive pollution tax to increase the net cost of polluting.
Because a certain type uses it as a code-phrase for "smaller cars, condos and fake cheeseburgers". They feel a deep sense of revolt at the affront of that personally, but are smart enough to realize they'll come off like the disgustingly amoral (imho evil) person they are if they complain about it personally. So they project it as a vague "standard of living" across poor/global-south people as a way of concern trolling libs into not taking their truck.
The fact that we are headed toward refugee crisis and Miami being underwater doesn't change the incentives and game theory aspect of it. If emissions are expensive to remove and there is no way to globally ensure that nearly everybody pays for their emissions then nobody is going to pay for any of their emissions and will just invest in mitigating the problems locally even if that's not the globally optimal solution. Any country that tries to make its people pay the actual cost of their emissions without the rest of the world doing the same will quickly see regime change because people aren't gonna waste a bunch of resources pissing in the wind like that.
If emission are cheap to remove then it's going to be easier to get everyone to pay and the fact that some "emissions havens" won't pay will be a non issue because picking up the slack will be cheap enough. In order to tax emissions at what it costs to dispose of them the cost of disposing of them needs to be cheaper.
(Of course both of us are making the assumption that taxing emissions at the cost of disposing of them will solve the problem which isn't guaranteed because nations will be tempted to use that money on other things but I think we can continue using that assumption for the time being.)