Most climate change activists also have tied being for climate change to a political identity. Their solutions to fixing the problem of green house gasses in the atmosphere call for wholesale changes to the current political and cultural system used in the West. If the only goal of the climate change activists was to get CO2 ppm in the atmosphere back to 300, then they should be just advocating for a carbon tax that ratchets down greenhouse gas emissions fairly quickly. Instead many of them are advocating the elimination of capitalism, free markets, and the patriarchy.
So? Just work with them on a carbon tax instead of denying the problem. A lot of these "activists" would happily take a revenue-neutral carbon tax that returns money to people via UBI. They don't have a snowball's chance of achieving all that other stuff so who cares?
Denying climate change is also tied to a political identity.
I'm assuming you meant "carbon tax"? Why? Because it's the most elegant way of putting a price on emissions.
Why UBI? It redistributes the tax collected from high emitters (likely to be higher income) to low-emitters (likely to be lower income) so progressives like it. It keeps the tax revenue neutral and doesn't allow the government to expand so conservatives like it.
> Why do these same activists also campaign against nuclear power?
Because of the long history of cost overruns, waste disposal and management issues, and the fear of a minuscule chance of catastrophic failure (not saying this last one is a rational fear).
Why fixate on nuclear power whenever climate change comes up? Why not institute a carbon tax and leave the rest to the market? Some countries (France, India, the UK) love nuclear power, and others (US, Japan, Germany) are not so hot on it. If they all have carbon taxes, each country can figure out for itself what it wants to do, and collectively embargo/tariff countries that don't have a carbon tax.
It's weird that a lot of people's default position is "I won't do anything for climate change unless we get nuclear power." Almost like they know there's very little chance of the national opinion about nuclear power changing very soon, so that gives them an "out" on taking any other action.
> Why? Because it's the most elegant way of putting a price on emissions.
I used to agree with this, and now I don't.
A carbon tax has to be an approximation, and there are significant judgement calls on what the total carbon burden of a given product or service might be. This is a recipe for paperwork, loopholes, and a raft of unintended consequences.
Instead, I support an across-the-board carbon sales tax on everything. Use some of this to subsidize carbon-reducing technology at the point of sale. Put the rest of it toward everything else we use taxes for, and make sure that renewable research, nuclear energy, and so on, are adequately funded. UBI? sure, why not; but let's not attach it directly to a climate tax, that only confuses both issues.
There are some exceptions: it's practical to calculate the carbon burden of electricity, and handle the taxation-and-subsidy market directly in that field.
> A carbon tax has to be an approximation, and there are significant judgement calls on what the total carbon burden of a given product or service might be.
Sorry, could you explain more? I always assumed a carbon tax meant an extraction tax on any fossil fuel. For example, taxing companies per barrel of crude, per ton of natgas or coal they take out of the ground. Since practically all carbon emissions involve the use of a fossil fuel somewhere in the chain, wouldn't this capture the carbon output of any product or service?
Sure, that would be one way to do it: if there were a one world government, which could impose such a tax.
But in the world we have, it's not going to work: that tax would be imposed on only the developed world, which already has issues competing in manufacturing, due to paying reasonable amounts of money for labor, and at least some attention to workplace safety and environmentally-responsible behavior.
So you'd have to apply tariffs of some sort on imported goods, and base it on some guesswork as to the carbon footprint of the items. At which point, just giving up and charging a sales tax is better, for the reasons I described.
Couldn't countries with carbon extraction taxes impose blanket 25% (or 50%, whatever it takes to get immediate compliance) tariffs on all imports from countries that don't have the same carbon taxes? Or impose economic sanctions, freeze assets and so on? Sorry, I'm just spitballing here. Have I fallen prey to "it's easy, just do X"?
I agree this would still require a fair amount of coordination between the countries that do the tariffs. But less so than deciding tariffs on individual products based on their pollution.
A little bit? A carbon tax is workable, I've just come to favor a sales tax as simpler.
They're both consumption taxes, the latter says "ok, this is what we have to take out of the economy to pay for mitigation, lets do it as a sales tax and then pay some of it back for products that reduce carbon burden, either directly or as substitute goods for especially polluting technologies".
The more moving parts something like this has, the more opportunities there are to take advantage of that. Sales tax already exists, it's well understood, this would be fire-and-forget, and it wouldn't create a bunch of new jobs for accountants (nothing against them, but we don't want that).
> it wouldn't create a bunch of new jobs for accountants
That's the part I'm not convinced about. A flat sales tax rate for carbon will inevitably under-tax or over-tax something. Making it fairer will require armies of accountants poring over the carbon intensity of product categories. And of course companies will say "our factories/trucks/warehouses/stores run on wind power, give us a rebate". I understand the appeal of tacking a carbon tax on to an existing tax regime, but would it really be so easy or fair?
PS I've upvoted all your comments in this discussion and I appreciate you engaging with me so far. It's given me a lot to think about.
> Sure, that would be one way to do it: if there were a one world government, which could impose such a tax.
You can just impose such a tax domestically, and tariff all imports from countries that don't have that tax.
The low-carbon industries in those countries will very quickly force their governments to implement a carbon tax, because such a tariff punishes them unfairly.
To be fair, this is because they have to tie their side since the others are tied as well. When one side has the support of the ruling party, you need some sort of way to rally people and, sadly, politicizing issues is the quickest way out. Many of their calls, which you summarized in an unflattering way, are also about making sure that CO2 emissions aren't encouraged and basically not allowed. Having a tax isn't going to stop them so people are calling for radical solutions. Is that a good thing? I'd say no but it's better than denying it or saying the problem is overblown, like many seem to. I'd rather people worry too much than not at all.
Can you explain what makes you think that having a tax wouldn't stop them?
If driving an electric car becomes less expensive relative to driving a gasoline car, people buy electric cars. If heating with electric heat pumps becomes less expensive relative to heating with oil, people install heat pumps. If generating electricity from wind or nuclear becomes less expensive than generating electricity from coal, people build new power plants accordingly.
I suppose this is indicative of the kind of thinking that leads someone to concern themselves with problems we are causing for future generations and millions of Bangladeshis.
