Hacker News Reader

Comment by lazerpants | Hacker News Reader

I'm fine with a carbon tax, but this entirely ignores that it may end up being regressive in the US since so many people in lower income brackets depend on older cars, and can't just upgrade to a Tesla if gas gets more expensive.

View on HN

Market-based™ plan:

> V. To maximize the fairness and political viability of a rising carbon tax, all the revenue should be returned directly to U.S. citizens through equal lump-sum rebates. The majority of American families, including the most vulnerable, will benefit financially by receiving more in “carbon dividends” than they pay in increased energy prices.

* https://www.carbonpricingleadership.org/news/2019/1/17/forme...

Co-signers include the then-former Federal Reserve chairs: Greenspan, Bernanke, Volcker, Yellen. Plus a bunch of Nobel laureate economists (Fama, Schiller, Scholes, Sharpe, etc).

An alternative market-based™ approach would be cap-and-trade, which was done under Bush41 for acid rain (and which California is doing for its carbon emissions IIRC).

See also "The Conservative Case For Carbon Dividends" [1] whose authors include James Baker (Secretary of State under GHW Bush, Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan), Martin Feldstein (chairman of Council of Economic Advisors under Reagan), N. Gregory Mankiw (chairman of GW Bush's Council of Economic Advisors), and Henry Paulson (GW Bush's Secretary of the Treasury), George Shultz (Reagan's Secretary of State, and Secretary of Treasury under Nixon).

[1] https://www.clcouncil.org/media/2017/03/The-Conservative-Cas...

My problem with a carbon tax, and carbon credits, it's that they're displacing the problem, and unless they translate to equivalent carbon capture, the net carbon emissions remain nearly the same.

The goal is reducing carbon emissions, not paying for emitting them. Stricter emission limits, and heavy fines/less subsidies for the biggest offenders would do wonders in this regard.

I always assumed that people who sequester carbon get negative carbon tax, i.e. a payout. If you increase the carbon price to eventually match the cost of sequestration things should work out to net zero emissions.

So far these people have not made a dent with their carbon capture. It's awesome if these carbon credits are advancing research on carbon capture, but that's not helping with reducing carbon emissions now, these shouldn't cancel actual emissions.

So far we don't have a carbon price that is anywhere close to the cost of sequestration, so I'm not surprised that neither a lot of sequestration nor a quick reduction in emissions is going on.

Most people who are in favor of a carbon tax are also in favor of a carbon dividend, where most of the carbon tax money is paid out again. Since poor people usually emit below average amounts of carbon, they'd come out ahead in such a scheme.

I don't understand this - emitting an "average" amount of carbon is still too much.

I mean, if a person is so poor that they are emitting less than the average amount emitted before the industrial revolution, then yes, maybe they should come out ahead. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're not aiming at a comfortable rate of adding carbon to the atmosphere, we actually have to stop increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

Depends what the tax is used for.

Using it to transition our economy to carbon neutral and bringing back manufacturing? Sure. Financing ever ballooning bureaucrats pension funds? No thanks.

carbon tax could be by state and only be calculated based on utilities. This would incentivize voters to favor carbon neutral/negative infrastructure.

(i agree penalizing individuals for not choosing expensive cars/stuff seems cruel)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com