How to Fix Global Warming

[drplokta]

All these attempts to micro-manage carbon emissions are futile, and in fact probably counter-productive by associating environmentalism with a new puritanism. If international agreement can be reached, the fix is relatively simple.

1. Determine the actual marginal environmental cost of an extra tonne of CO₂ emissions -- current estimates are between US$10 and US$80.

2. Tax fossil fuels at this level at the point of extraction -- it's a lot easier to tax a few hundred mining and oil companies than it is to tax a few billion consumers. Also tax deforestation and other activities likely to put more CO₂ into the atmosphere. Guarantee the tax level for at least 15 years (possibly with an inflation adjustment) so that people and companies can make long term investments based on it.

3. Rebate the tax to any user of fossil fuels who can demonstrate that their use will keep the CO₂ out of the atmosphere for at least 500 years. Give a similar rebate to anyone who demonstrably removes CO₂ from the atmosphere for at least 500 years.

4. Keep 10% of the funds raised for UN programmes to help countries who are especially affected by climate change. Pay the remainder to national governments in proportion to their population as at 1 January 2009. Permanent migrants get their share transferred from their old country to their new one, so you need to recalculate the shares every ten years or so. It's up to the governments if they use the money for subsidising fuel for poor people, climate change mitigation, or fancy new presidential palaces.

5. Do nothing else -- leave it to the market to decide how much to insulate homes, what kind of light bulbs to use, how many airports to build, whether or not to use patio heaters, etc.

A one-way flight to the US from the UK produces about 1.25 tonnes of CO₂ per passenger, so the fuel for such a flight would be taxed at between US$12.50 and US$100. Air Passenger Duty for such a flight is currently £40, and will be £150 from November 2010, so it's currently about right, and the increase is not necessary.

A litre of petrol gives off about 0.0025 tonnes of CO₂ (2.5kg), and so should be taxed between 2.5 cents and 20 cents -- UK fuel duties are a lot more than this, so drivers are more than covering their climate change costs.

Comments

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

I agree with your plan, but the UK-US flights would be in band B, so a single APD fee would be £60 in economy from 2010. Nowhere costs more than £85 single.

[andrewducker]

Your unstated axiom seems to be that the government should only involve itself in things that cost money. I'm not sure what proportion of people would agree with that.

[erikvolson.livejournal.com]

Air Passenger Duty for such a flight is currently £40, and will be £150 from November 2010, so it's currently about right, and the increase is not necessary.

Disagree. That price is already factored in. If the goal is to reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere, this needs to be added on *top* of already existing duties.

I think tax is one of many strategies that could be use. I personally like cap-and-trade better, because it directly rewards firms that go beyond the absolute minimum, and directly limits the maximum output. It even lets those who wish to spend more to reduce carbon to do so (buy purchasing emission credits, and not using them.)

The simple fact is that to reduce carbon *will* cause some pain. To limit it to cars, either the population drives less, replaces current vehicles with ones that emit less carbon, or some combination. By definition, this is an economic harm.

I do agree that puritanism isn't the right answer unless we're dealing with an immediate catastrophe -- say, multiple meter sea level rises in 3-10 year timeframes.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Giving the UN tax raising powers? The US isn't going to like that very much, especially since it's the US energy companies that will be among those most taxed.

Nice idea, and I don't disagree with most of it, but the political reality is that US, Russia and China (at least!) would never let it happen.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I suspect that climate change policy experts would have roughly the same reaction to this idea as I did to Andrew Ducker's solution to unemployment yesterday.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

I agree that taxing carbon is the simplest and most effective way to go. But if we're going to do it, we need to get over the conservative ideological opposition to any and all taxation. That's made a carbon tax a non-starter in the US. There's also the reality that the next best solution, cap and trade, can be structured so it's a vast subsidy for all sorts of industries that succeed in lobbying to get themselves classified as non-polluting. It's going to be hard to get people to look past such a splendid opportunity for corruption and do what is right. I'm actually a bit more hopeful now because of the huge volatility we're experiencing in energy prices. The proposed carbon tax is very modest compared to the factor of four increase we had in the price of oil. And now that the economy has crashed and the price of oil has gone down with it, taxing carbon would be taxing something that has become very cheap again and that we're not using much of.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on a lot of that, but the tax revenues need to be spent in a way that reduces the cause/effect of climate change, otherwise, it's simply revenue generation with a greenwash. As the money is not spent that way at present, drivers are not actually covering their climate change costs.

You should also tax at source activities that release methane, such as pig farming, peat extraction, etc.

It makes far more sense to charge for CO2/methane emissions than it does to tinker with endless systems to try and make people use different light bulbs, patio heaters, etc.

[coth.livejournal.com]

How do you tax the methane clathrates?