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this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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That's easy to just say, but what would the regulation be? No more fossil fuels starting tomorrow? Civilisation grinds to a halt, or more likely people just ignore the law. Corporations have to be responsible? They interpret "responsible" as a $5 donation quarterly to panda conservation. You could go through every technology that uses fossil fuels and tighten up efficiencies, but that's slow to start with, and then it turns out it causes a big problem in some niche application. Think about plastic straws and disabled people. It's far better just to add a tax and let it work out in the wash.
We can test your argument by asking what has been done historically, and we can successfully point to dozens of examples of environmental regulation that didn't involve a tax. There can't be any serious debate about the fact that we've done this in the past, and it worked in the past.
You could be right, maybe adding a tax is more effective on average, but I'm apprehensive. When you make the system complex and allow people to trade their credits, you've just created a system that's designed to be abused, and of course it will be.
Actually, I would debate that we've done this sort of thing in the past. We phased out CFCs pretty fast, but that was just one sort of chemical with comparable alternatives available for it's reasonably narrow uses. Some of the alternatives did turn out to be problematic as well, IIRC, and then had to be phased out or restricted in turn.
The equivalent policy would be saying oil will be banned by 2035, figure it out investors. That's actually less interventionist than a carbon tax, and really seems like it would be ignored until 2033, when everyone goes "oops, extension please".
I mean, a complex, opaque system that works anyway do to clever structure is kind of the principle of our whole civilisation.
CFCs are a good reminder that we can successfully ban dangerous things, if we carefully follow up to see what the workarounds are, and if they are harmful, too.
Or consider a simple car example. SUVs and trucks in the US have led to a massive increase in deaths. And they pollute heavily. And they fill up roads making traffic worse. And there's less room for parking. Why not simply ban trucks over a certain size or weight for personal use? Obviously people are driving vehicles far larger than they need, and it's killing others. So ban new sales starting in five years. Why not? The manufacturers know what they're doing is unethical, and they don't care, so nobody would feel bad for them.
I don't understand what you mean about opaqueness being the principle of our civilization. Democratic government has the express opposite goal.
Oh yeah? Without looking it up, what was the name or number of the last motion parliament passed? I'm not sure, and I pay more attention than most.
I know, you said goal, but then why bother with a rigid constitution and giant complex legal system? A lot of vague goals were mentioned on the way, and implemented in sometimes weird ways (peine forte et dure, looking at you), but in 2024 checks and balances are the clear winning design concept. Our system is a system, it's not dependent on the actions or intentions of any one person. It's complex as a result, and therefore opaque to anyone who's not near-omniscient. Ditto for markets.
Well, what about remote areas? I guarantee there's at least one dude on a farm that can't be accessed without a bit of ground clearance. That was the original use-case of SUVs. Funny enough, they became popular generally because of US regulations introduced around 2000 or so, which made small vehicles more expensive to produce, and prompted companies to hard-sell larger models.
How do you define personal, too? I know plenty of people who have a truck that they use for work, but also personally. I don't know how they've structured the ownership of their vehicle, or how you would distinguish between "my tax shelter owns it" and an actual business. You'd have to figure that out, and then enforce it, administrate it, and build in carveouts for whatever exceptions that turns up.
This derisively gets called the "why don't you just" school of public policy. There's a reason actual regulations tend to be many, many pages long, and usually still have tons of gaps.
It sounds like you're suggesting that because our system of government is complex, increasing the complexity even more is generally a perfectly reasonable thing to do. If that's what you mean, I disagree with you.
It also sounds like you're repeating basic facts about crafting legislation that we all know. I'm not a lawmaker and I'm not trying to write a law here in the comment section, so I don't particularly care to prepare a several page document. Certainly one could do so if one were so inclined...
Not everybody knows that. If you do, cool, good to know, and I'm surprised you're still so certain anyone could write this thing successfully.
On complexity, that we got off on a bit of a tangent, but I guess what I'm saying is that it's unavoidable. You said... just a moment, I need to look back and repost because I'm forgetting...
Right. There's not more complexity to a carbon tax. In fact, the point of it is that it's really simple for legislators to implement, for industry to follow and adapt around, and we still have a strong theory that says it should work to reduce emissions, regardless of any (legal) attempts at "abuse". The way it actually works itself out will be complex, but that's because our technology and supply chains are intrinsically complex.