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Comment by phkahler | Hacker News Reader

>> But in order to mitigate climate change, the US—through Congress—needs to adopt a carbon pricing scheme that is "fair, economy-wide, and effective in reducing emissions consistent with the Paris Agreement."

That sounds like another plea for cabon credits and some kind of market for them - you know, so wallstreet can play middleman.

The only fair way is IMHO to tax any carbon based fuel coming into the country or out of the ground. Whomever uses it will ultimately pay the higher price for it. Anything else is just playing favorites. I'm not a fan of it BTW, just pointing out what a fair way to penalize cabon use would be.

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The difficulty is accurately taxing the embodied carbon of imported non-fuel goods. Figuring out the carbon footprint of a barrel of oil relatively easy, but figuring out how much carbon was emitted to produce a shipping container full of electronics is not. This is important because if you underestimate you are effectively subsidizing foreign industry.

Not the OP, but I think what he meant was that the electricity that went into producing the container full of electronics will be more expensive depending on the way it was produced. If it was produced in a fossil-fuel burning power plant, then the producer will pay a carbon tax when they buy the fuel. This tax will cover the externality produced by the CO2 emitted during the electricity generation, and the manufacturer of the electronics does not need to bother with another tax themselves.

I personally think this makes sense.

What the OP did not mention is how do you give a benefit to those who contribute to removing CO2 from the atmosphere, for example for people who plant trees on their property. To me it's only logical that a tax charge for emissions should go hand in hand with a tax rebate for negative emissions. However, I'm not deeply immersed into this topic, I have no idea of the pros and cons of various approaches. I simply think that this simple idea makes sense.

> how do you give a benefit to those who contribute to removing CO2 from the atmosphere, for example for people who plant trees on their property.

You don't. Unless it's done at a large, industrial scale the effects of these efforts are negligible. There are always exceptions of course, like that guy in Texas who rehabilitated thousands of acres of land.

Not to mention planting trees on your property is its own reward. Trees are nice to look at, they give shade, hold topsoil, and create healthy ecosystems. They may even increase your property's value.

On the other hand, if we get good at carbon capture at scale (e.g. by harnessing un-storeable renewable energy) the money from carbon taxes should be used to pay for it.

An acre of trees absorbs on average the CO2 produced by two cars [1]. A typical American car travels about 12000 miles/ year and has an fuel consumption of about 24mpg, so two cars burn about 1000 gallons per year. For a carbon tax of $0.2/gallon [2], that's $200 per year. Currently you can buy forest land for less than $1000/acre e.g. [3]. An incentive of $200/year could make forest ownership one of the best investments available anywhere.

[1] http://www.tenmilliontrees.org/trees/

[2] https://www.resourcesmag.org/common-resources/calculating-va...

[3] https://www.landandfarm.com/property/Timber_Property_Surroun...

Nice analysis! Thank you!

Tax rebates are simple to corrupt.

The simplest, non corruptible method to reach the goal of reducing fossil fuel usage is to tax the fossil fuel itself.

How high does the tax need to be? Keep raising it until the effects of fossil fuels on climate change subside.

And this won’t ever happen because it will cause a decrease in perceived quality of life due to decreased ability to consume resources, and that’s not politically tenable.

All of this carbon offset and credit and rebate talk is useless since it won’t actually reduce overall consumption, but it is politically palatable as it just pretends to shift things around without sacrifice, much like recycling did.

> This is important because if you underestimate you are effectively subsidizing foreign industry.

I think the idea is that every country in the world taxes imported or mined carbon, so there's no escaping the taxes and no implicit subsidies. The ones that don't play get hit with heavy tariffs, sanctions, or trade embargoes.

That would be great, but under current WTO rules sanctions and trade embargoes are effectively illegal unless they are against North Korea, Cuba, or Iran.

There are precedents for pollution credit programs. I believe such a program has been credited with reducing acid rain in the U.S., for example.

>The only fair way is IMHO to tax any carbon based fuel coming into the country or out of the ground.

what about cow farts?

Are they not also carbon based fuels coming out of the ground? The farts are a byproduct of digested organic matter like corn and grass, and contain some unusable or "un-harvest-able" fuel(s)?

Taxing oil raises the cost of energy, feed, transportation and everything else in the meat supply chain. Less demand = fewer cow farts.

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> The only fair way is IMHO to tax any carbon based fuel coming into the country or out of the ground. Whomever uses it will ultimately pay the higher price for it. Anything else is just playing favorites. I'm not a fan of it BTW, just pointing out what a fair way to penalize cabon use would be.

I don't really see how this is fair. the environmental impact of burning fossil fuels can vary a lot depending on how and where it is done. when an ICE vehicle burns fuel, the carbon is released directly into the atmosphere at ground level. an airplane that releases the same amount of carbon at a high altitude has a significantly greater warming effect. a power plant might burn a huge amount of fossil fuels, but recapture most of the carbon before it enters the atmosphere.

taxing the fuel itself has an appealing simplicity, but it creates a very crude incentive structure. in particular, it creates zero incentive to actually clean up emissions per unit fuel.

How many operating carbon capture plants are there, and what are the barrier to greater adoption?

What's not fair is countries facing fire, drought, and land loss because of other countries carbon pollution.

This is not pollution control. We need to stop mining carbon and burning it, and we need to stop doing almost all of it.

We should worry about plastics and fertilizers, not IC vehicles or electricity. Those are comparably easy to deal with.

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