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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

Hence drastically raising taxes on fossil fuels. The environmental costs of fossil fuels are nowhere close to being represented in the cost of fuel people pay, therefore we have this massive misallocation of resources.

But then society will have to vote for sacrificing luxury today for the benefit of future generations, which typically doesn’t go well.

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You can't "drastically" raise taxes _just_ on fossil fuels though. You'll be "drastically" raising them on every single thing, disproportionately harming the poor.

The poor can be helped by transferring wealth from those that have it to those that need it rather than taking it from future generations’ environment.

Very easy to be generous with somebody else's money. What typically happens, though, is the ultra wealthy avoid taxation, and middle class ends up footing the bill. How much of your own net worth are you prepared to "transfer"?

Yes, geopolitical boundaries make the concept of wealth redistribution difficult to execute. Hence it typically happens via some type of destructive force, natural or man made.

However, it has nothing to do with the separate problem of creating a hostile environment (the physical world) for future generations which can only be avoided by reducing fossil fuel usage which can only be accomplished one way - increasing the cost of using it.

As far as how much personal wealth I’m willing to depart with, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get people healthcare, minimum vacation time, sick leave, higher education, and parental leave.

This is why redistributionist ideologies are typically internationalist in nature. E.g. the third international and its siblings.

The problem is that the cost of environment degradation is only an economic externality to the fossil fuel producers and distributors. That means the poor are already paying for remediation. Moving the tax burden on to the producers is a zero-sum game: the cost of environmental remediation is still bourne by the consumer, but shifting the payments towards the source of the degradation is a governance policy that can shift the equilibrium of the system towards a more sustainable model.

It's a reasonable position and one of the options before those we have chosen to lead us. Then again, the argument "but muh munny" is a strong counterargument among those who own them.

> "but muh munny" is a strong counterargument among those who own them

As it will be for you, should you manage to accumulate any wealth.

I have plenty of wealth and no debt because I planned well over a long career. In general I get excellent value for my taxes, although I am constantly disappointed by their being funnelled into corporate welfare and subsidies for the rich. It's enough to make me cynical.

You can pair that with a welfare state to offset that as many countries are able to do

Seems a little extreme if our goal is just to get more people using public transportation.

Our goal is mitigating catastrophic climate change. Making cities more livable is just a nice side effect.

In that case I guess the best option is more lockdowns, or even better reduce the population through any means necessary. /sarcasm

I don’t see the sarcasm. Reducing fossil fuel usage can be accomplished in part by reducing the number of people consuming fossil fuels, as well as reducing fossil fuel use per person (which means less traveling/consumption).

Most people that would be removed by population control measures will have negligible impacts on the carbon emissions though. If you cherry pick rich Americans, Canadians, Australians and Saudis you might do well

No, more lockdown does exactly nothing to get us off our dependence on fossil fuel. On the contrary, wrecking the economy makes the changes needed less affordable.

Reducing population also only buys time. I think you already know both of these things.

America already has a welfare state (of sorts), it's not like they're talking about abolishing private property in order get more people on to buses.

huh? why not

1. Climate change already disproportionately effects the poor. They live in low lying areas that will flood first and are not well positioned to move when necessary. 2. Carbon taxes can be revenue neutral by giving everyone a equal portion of revenues as a tax refund.

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