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Comment by antocv | Hacker News Reader

All good points. Why can Japan and China do it? Are their politicians better than Euro-crats?

Reading a bit more on this, seems EU had proposed already 1996 a common European signaling system as you say to integrate the various railroad companies diverse ssytems, and a bunch of other directives for a EU high speed rail. And yet in 2019, France still of course runs their own, Sweden their own with a ERTS type 2 on some lines, and many others not advancing at all since 1996.

Different signalig/control systems, different electrification systems, and some small gauge differences in Ireland and Spain.

> Thus, the upfront investment cost of unification, planning and building such high speed tracks

How can we put pressure on EU to do this despite high cost? Tax the air-lines and put the money in pan-european high-speed rail, from Lissabon to Tallin, Amsterdam to Athens.

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> Why can Japan and China do it? Are their politicians better than Euro-crats?

They both are individual countries, so they don't face that problem.

> How can we put pressure on EU to do this despite high cost?

If you tax air-lines first, and then use the money to build an alternative, even in the most optimistic scenario, you'll end up in a situation where long-distance travels become substantially more expensive at least for a few years. Climate activists claim that long-distance travels are not a human right, but ironically, free movement is one of the core values of the EU. And making travels more expensive would exclude more people than today from exercising their right as a EU citizen.

The only realistic option to make the switch from air to train a meaningful option for long-distance travels, would be to 'internalize' the environmental costs, i.e. a CO2 tax (or certificates). However, to calculate this in a fair manner, this would become so high, that you would face a tremendous economical recession.

To me, it never made sense to spend so much resources (brain, time and money) to reduce emissions, because we cannot go to zero and we have already polluted the planet. Wouldn't it be wiser to spend all this money to "repair" the damage we've already done? Maybe solar panels with artificial photo synthesis? Or GMOs with a higher rate of carbon storage?

We must do both. We can achieve zero emissions. Its really simple to tax-more-and-more-if-you-pollute in whatever form be it air or pesticides. And use the taxation money to invest in scrubbing, cleaning and more efficient ways of travel such as high-speed trains.

Pollution of any kind is just externalizing, out-sourcing the costs to others, its not fair.

> Pollution of any kind is just externalizing, out-sourcing the costs to others, its not fair.

That's way too simple, imho. Things come with side effects, usually. Of course, we should not pollute more than necessary, but the fact that there /is/ pollution is just a side effect of having

  - a civilisation
  - an economy
  - better overall health (and, thus, more humans)
  - ...

This all makes it possible to pay for welfare. In that sense, collecting taxes would be just externalizing the costs (of being dependent on welfare, thus being unproductive) to others.

The question, if we should do both is not a question of what sounds more fair, more justified or whatever. If it would turn out that "repairing" is more cost-efficient than "preventing", then why bother with the least effective measure?

> We can achieve zero emissions. Its really simple to tax-more-and-more-if-you-pollute in whatever form be it air or pesticides.

Some emissions are simply unavoidable. E.g. producing meat produces methane. So, taxing it would certainly bring down the demand for high-emission products (because of their now higher price) but as long as these products still exists, you won't go to zero.

I doubt fish, pigs or goats produce any methane in any significant amount. Meat can be produced without polluting, it doesnt have to be cows. The cost still has to be payed though, even if it is so low.

Even so, just because some pollution would be hard to stop doesnt mean we shouldnt strive to tax it and every polluter anyway.

Compare a country such as Albania producing all its electricity by hydropower and Netherlands which is still burning coal. Both are civilizations and nice place to live with welfare, yet one is polluting and the other is not.

> Compare a country such as Albania producing all its electricity by hydropower and Netherlands which is still burning coal. Both are civilizations and nice place to live with welfare, yet one is polluting and the other is not.

And now compare the standard of living in both countries. Or their GNP. Or their healthcare systems.

I'm not saying that they're better of because they burn coal. But I'm saying that using energy is causing so much positive side effects, i.e. that we have an economy. It's just hard to attribute the negative side effects to one "polluter".

Again, with the same argument you might as well stop taxation, because it imposes costs on those who are productive to pay for those who are unproductive. However, upholding civil peace through a welfare system might be of higher value than 'punishing' the less productive people for their lack of capabilities.

Remember the ice cube in futurama? Every year you will need a bigger one. The cost of repair grows over time and it grows quickly.

Free movement is a core value, negligible cost or cheap free movement is not. Freedom from border controls - that's it.

Given the likely impacts from a heating climate and predictions of economics costs, that probably vastly underestimate, I submit the "tremendous economic recession" comes from not taking adequate action. We'll probably need to end up rationing air travel as the only fair way to achieve the necessary reductions.

For me, I simply don't understand economic arguments for inaction. The economic consequences of ignoring the problem are going to be orders of magnitude worse, and a permanent ongoing drag on economies.

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