> Rich people may not eat more food, but they may eat food that is shipped in from all over the world.
Or they may eat farm-to-table and shop at local farmers' markets. On the other side, step into any Wal-Mart or dollar store, and almost everything there was manufactured and shipped from Asian continent.
> It taxes fossil fuels at the point of production
How does it work with fossil fuels refined in Middle East and delivered to China?
> tend not to take public transport as much
The first thing that happened after California approved driver licenses for undocumented aliens is that used car sales surged and public transport dropped (LAMTA and Metrolink specifically). For a lot of lower-income customers buying the car was aspirational and signified the rite of passage. In their price segment they're not typically shopping EVs either.
> If carbon is used in the making of it, then it's X% tax.
That gets tricky - how much carbon was used in manufacturing an iPhone, a toy truck or that shrimp of questionable origin from a fast food place?
Every participant in that chain has an incentive to under-report their emission to make the final price more palatable. The larger the manufacturing sector, the larger the incentive to under-report and cover up any issues at the national level.
It’s not actually tricky. Simple ask foreign manufacturers to voluntarily submit to Western inspectors (so e.g. the US can control their production process same as it would if they were based in the US ... this of course shouldn’t only happen for CO2, but for other environmental & labour standards as well) and slap a 20-50% import fee on all that don’t. The problem solves itself!
That way local manufacturers aren’t being penalized, while foreign manufacturers can still be more competitive because of lower labour costs. Levelling the playing field.
Not only is what you described as 'tricky' - it's considerably too expensive and unworkable. We have a hard enough time agreeing on basic things, let alone get into the operational details of 'inspectors' from 'foreign countries' waltzing around.
We can't even do with money ie where it really matters. There are no real generally accepted accounting practices in large swaths of the world. And even then - things get tricky and ambiguous.
No - just tax the fuel and that's it. The fuel gets a harmonisation if it's taxed somewhere else and coming into the country and that's that.
Nope, we can do with money. Why do you think Swiss banks are so averse to open accounts for US persons? They don't want to be subject to US reporting rules. It gets harder with paper money
I agree fuel taxes are best. But the issue remains - how will you know that the manufacturer is buying taxed fuel (not black-market, untaxed oil, or untaxed oil that China is importing from Venezuela with a bilateral agreement)? Inspections.
It would be complicated, but the West (US + EU + the rest) are big and powerful enough to make it happen.
The US having digital access to financial records of citizens in Switerzland, is not comparable to the scale of government entities overseeing the entire global manufacturing base.
The US/EU could feasibly make some kind of trade pact, whereby producers are required to indicate the carbon used in each product, but there is no feasible way to oversee it.
COVID masks are literally being made by people in 're-education jail' in China. Safety and operational standards in many parts of the world are simply non-existent.
>Or they may eat farm-to-table and shop at local farmers' markets. On the other side, step into any Wal-Mart or dollar store, and almost everything there was manufactured and shipped from Asian continent.
This is my main concern. The reason the gillets jaune were protesting was due to taxes that had an outsized effect on low income and rural earners.
The pollution problems with bunker fuel are primarily local and short-lived, however, whereas CO2 emissions spread through the entire atmosphere and stay there for a very long time.
OT: This website is on a new (to me) level in the cookie wars. After I "change my preferences", which is already hidden behind purposely confusing wording, it has to "save my changed preferences", with a progress counter, that seems to get stuck on 90-something percent for a long time, with a big, handy "cancel" button visible.
It's hard to interpret this as anything other than maliciousness.
> Shipping by ocean is surprisingly low in carbon emissions.
Surprisingly low emissions per amount of cargo transported, yes. But the absolute amount of emissions is still huge and the amount of cargo keeps growing, so I don't think this measure is very relevant.
Cargo ships are better for the environment than shipping the same amount of goods from China to the US via trucks. But as the latter isn't possible anyway, this is not a very tangible benefit.
What would benefit the environment was shipping less goods.
> Or they may eat farm-to-table and shop at local farmers' markets. On the other side, step into any Wal-Mart or dollar store, and almost everything there was manufactured and shipped from Asian continent.
Good point. Rich people who live environmentally sustainable lives are not the problem, in this context. I don't have a problem with them being rewarded.
The way I look at it is, right now, even if you want to reduce your emissions, it's really hard to know how to get the biggest bang for your buck. Should I get a new fuel-efficient car, or drive this one until it dies so as to avoid the emissions of manufacturing a new car? Should I swap out my gas stove for an electric one? Etc. Adding a carbon tax is almost like magic, in how it piggybacks on all the normal price optimizations we do every day. The prices will change to reflect the environmental cost, so you don't even have to try to change your behavior, you'll just adjust naturally.
> How does it work with fossil fuels refined in Middle East and delivered to China?
I should clarify, it taxes fossil fuels produced in America or imported into America. It doesn't solve the problem for the whole world -- if only it were that easy. But it does solve one half of the problem where the US and China can point at each other and claim that the other one should make the first move while the problem gets worse and worse. The USA isn't the biggest polluter per capita, nor the biggest in absolute terms, but it's pretty high up on both, and we've been contributing to the problem for a LONG time.
> The first thing that happened after California approved driver licenses for undocumented aliens is that used car sales surged and public transport dropped (LAMTA and Metrolink specifically). For a lot of lower-income customers buying the car was aspirational and signified the rite of passage. In their price segment they're not typically shopping EVs either.
So... all I get out of that is that people who are not allowed to drive drive less than people who are allowed to. I don't think that is evidence that poor people take public transport less than rich people.
> The way I look at it is, right now, even if you want to reduce your emissions, it's really hard to know how to get the biggest bang for your buck.
This is absolutely true, and it misses an important point: lowering emissions not your own is almost always more efficient.
A very tangible real world example.
I invested xxxxx € making my little house super energy efficient. Meanwhile, in Riga, Latvia, close friends had central city heating, but not even a valve for turning off radiators. They'd just open a window at -30°C. I could have bought thermostatic valves for the entire building and made ten times the ecological difference for a tenth of the price!
Even without a carbon tax, that alternative would have made a lot more economical and ecological sense for both myself and a lot of other people!
Or they may eat farm-to-table and shop at local farmers' markets. On the other side, step into any Wal-Mart or dollar store, and almost everything there was manufactured and shipped from Asian continent.
> It taxes fossil fuels at the point of production
How does it work with fossil fuels refined in Middle East and delivered to China?
> tend not to take public transport as much
The first thing that happened after California approved driver licenses for undocumented aliens is that used car sales surged and public transport dropped (LAMTA and Metrolink specifically). For a lot of lower-income customers buying the car was aspirational and signified the rite of passage. In their price segment they're not typically shopping EVs either.