MikeJ
6097
The most frustrating thing is that more than 2/3rd of Canadians are prepared to vote for parties that would maintain or extend the federal carbon tax, but due to vote splitting and FPTP, that might mean that it gets killed anyway.
I mull this over myself, how bad of a problem is it really? We don’t know. XKCD had that good comic about ‘what does 4 degrees mean’. Basically 4 degrees different in the past meant that New York City was under 1 mile of ice. So the climate is so drastically different than today it could be basically unrecognizable. Perhaps the USA turns into the Sahara desert… would that make it higher on your list of priorities? But that seems extreme and unlikely as well.
Even if the USA still functions like it does today, if other parts of the world do drastically change, the immigration and economic cost could really damage the world economy and affect us all - if everyone is out of a job and crime soars and 30 million people mass on the southern border until we shoot them with guns indiscriminately to keep them out - is that what we want?
I suspect the US, Canada, China, Europe have enough money to adapt (irrigation, repairs after storms) and the rest of the world (Africa, south Asia) just gets screwed.
Anyway that’s some rambling.
But sufficiency is only a matter of the degree of carbon tax. You, today, would cut your gas use to a gallon a month if gas cost $1K per gallon. Obviously that can’t happen in the short term, but what if we started with 25 cents a gallon and increased it by 25 cents for 50 years? That would drive demand to near zero I suspect.
I’m curious as to your ideas of alternate paths - simply ‘require’ car makers to produce non-gas cars, while gas remains $2.40 a gallon? Not to accuse you of being over-simplistic but the regulation / technology argument inevitably goes against consumer preference, while the carbon tax might also but to a much lesser extent. We like to self-optimize and save money.
MikeJ
6099
Out of curiosity, what would be your top few problems?
I’d put climate change in the top 1 or 2, myself. It’s competing with the global move towards nationalism, illiberal democracy and general pride in ignorance. Of course, that problem makes the climate problem a lot harder to solve (and the climate problem will make that problem a lot harder to solve).
A fairly reasonable conservative argument (not that we have many true conservatives left, I think Strollen and Timex might qualify) is that debt is a bigger problem, as we are tying the hands behind the backs of our kids and grandkids. I disagree it’s a bigger issue, but it is a reasonable argument.
MikeJ
6101
I agree that the US fiscal trajectory is pretty bad. I think it could be solved with some reasonable measures, but when is tax policy reasonable? The federal government in Canada got a handle on a bad debt problem in the 90’s, and though there has been a little backsliding, it wasn’t as painful as predicted.
On the other hand, going into debt to preserve a more habitable planet for future generations is about as fair as deficit spending gets. I’m glad the US government was willing to run up a lot of debt during the early 1940’s, for instance.
Timex
6102
Trump destroying our country and the world.
MikeJ
6103
OK. It seems to be a difference about how and whether you clump problems together. I put Trump as a subset of the “move towards nationalism, illiberal democracy and general pride in ignorance” problem. If Trump’s KFC catches up with him tomorrow, the overall problem will still be there.
Matt_W
6104
We’re really not. Without a time travel machine, we can’t consume the goods produced by our kids and grandkids. The worst we can do fiscally is obligate them to produce goods for sale overseas… but I thought restoring the U.S. manufacturing base was a good thing?
We can however pollute the planet they’ll live on and make it difficult for humans to inhabit. That seems worse than any fiscal shenanigans.
I have probably already done so — at least direct petrol use — but I don’t have to work. Lots of people would simply lose their jobs in that event.
I think that government action on a grand scale is the only thing that has a chance to make a difference. We need massive government investment in alternative / renewable power plants, massive government investment in clean mass transit solutions, and rapidly phased-in restrictions leading to bans on internal combustion engines.
I’m happy to have carbon taxes as part of that, but I don’t think we have been discussing any actual carbon tax plans in this thread that can or will make a big difference.
I don’t agree with that. As Krugman says all the time, the debt is a claim we have on ourselves. To the extent that there is a deficit problem which crowds out possible spending on climate change mitigation, it is entirely manufactured by those same conservatives, for personal and political gain. Absent their fear-mongering about the results of their own policies, we wouldn’t even have a deficit problem of note.
Aceris
6106
The argument here is “Do we prefer statist solutions or market mechanisms”, with the carbon tax at the market mechanisms end.
I think it’s more “can market solutions like carbon taxes actually achieve zero net emissions in time to avert catastrophe”.
The investments sound good but the money has to come from somewhere. Raising income tax or sales tax is equally as hard if not harder than introducing a carbon tax, and the latter contributes to reduction of GHG. The restrictions are a tough sell. General motors is on the edge of profitability and demand is for gas cars. How do we tell them to stop making gas cars when it’s all the customers want? Electric cars are more expensive, but closing the price gap would enable a natural tendency to shift.
I’d like to get an EV but the cost is tough to justify and is not made up in fuel savings. The Tesla 3 is $55K Canadian, $59K after tax and after $5K government incentive.
Sure. If we can borrow $1trillion per year to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, why can’t we borrow $1trillion per year to pay for clean generating infrastructure? Or better yet, forego the tax cuts and spend $2trillion.
If we are constrained to only the solutions customers want, we’re dead already.
To be clear: Do you think market forces are all we have to work with?
If I had not been prematurely retired, an EV was going to be my next step, having already installed a 10.5 kWh solar array on the roof. Instead, I sold everything and simplified my life.
MikeJ
6112
I guess it just goes to show the difference in perspective. To me, those are all worthy goals, but nothing to compete with climate change, except perhaps your number 1. But for that, not sure how much is actionable in the next decade. Constitutional amendments are hard.
Timex
6113
The reason strollen’s number one is mine as well, is that without it, you will not achieve anything else.
An authoritarian dictator will not do anything about climate change.
Tim_N
6114
Do you have kids?
Sure, but it’s a real chicken and an egg problem, because if climate change and the ecological crisis goes unmitigated then there’s no real point in restoring democratic institutions in the US except in the short term, ‘rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic’ and all that.
RichVR
6115
If you have a list and it doesn’t start with Get rid of Trump and then Climate Change… I just don’t understand.
The consequences of not dealing with climate change are several orders of magnitude more severe than not dealing with the others. And that’s putting it lightly.
However, it’s hard to do anything meaningful while you have the equivalent of an enraged toddler and its toddler friends in the room smashing everything up, smearing shit on the walls and threatening to press all the big red buttons that say “Do not press” on them.
