While the Republican majority in the House means that this kind of thing won’t pass this session, it gives a sense of what Democrats might try to pass if they win enough seats.
What about cutting subsidies? Make the price of fuel more realistic to force reductions. The money saved can go to the same places, but we also slow emissions. It will definitely be terrible for most people, but real solutions have to be hard.
What about cutting subsidies? Make the price of fuel more realistic to force reductions.
This would primarily impact low income families who can’t afford electric vehicles and who are dependent on fossil fuel sources for cooking and heating. It’s worth discussing these options, and at some point the issue will have to be forced, but the impact needs to be mitigated with forethought.
real solutions have to be hard.
This isn’t necessarily true. Wind and solar power have become the most cost-effective power generating options, to the point where almost all new grid power generation is one or the other (see the Lazard report on Levelized Cost of Energy). Building anything else in the current market looks like a financial mistake. I’m pretty sure this is why the recent attempts to build new nuclear power never get beyond the initial planning - the falling cost of wind and solar keeps undercutting their projected $/MWh. This happened because of government subsidies driving the development of wind and solar until they became viable, and it didn’t require a direct negative impact on anybody.
The real takeaway here is that government subsidies are very effective for turning prototype technologies into effective solutions.
The problem is that people are conditioned to blame the president for the current cost of gas, and that gas should always cost the same. If not, then inflation is too high, never mind that keeping the cost the same means the real cost is falling. Or that right now gas costs two cents lower than it did in 2013 pre inflation.
Amaricans would absolutely blame the current government for gas going from $3.52 a gallon to the sill subsidized to an extent EU average $7.31 a gallon. Throw in the more realistic costs of actually cleaning up said co2 with direct air carbon capture at a $100 a ton and you get $8.20 a gallon, which is actually nowhere remotely near as bad as I expected it to be, though that would require someone to actually do carbon capture at scale. Electricity of course beats the pants off of all of the above at an US average cost of about $1.90 per gallon equivalent.
You also have the inflationary effects of the US being very dependent on trucks for most goods transport, due in no small part to rail companies entering a state of ‘managed decline’ and looting said infrastructure for scrap at a time where everyone from China and India to Ethiopia and North Korea were electrifying, and thusly being stuck with trains that cost nearly twice as much to run as electric lines run by an industry of managers who think that their customers are going to replace a single train with gravel with several thousand trucks any day now so might as well sell the tracks off.
That being said, a high vehicle registration tax on gas and diesel vehicles combined with an effectively free one on new energy vehicles seems to have demonstrated more of an effect, though admittedly places that have tried that have also tended to have a far less subsidized cost of fuel in the first place so it may only have an potent effect in combination.
Functionally the US also needs an equivalent to or allow import of the French Ami and similar such cheap city cars as well as Canadian style legislation demanding that landlords must install L2 chargers if asked if it wants for cars to still be an option for poor rural people, which unfortunately given the need to cut carbon now and the demonstrated ability of US cities to take a decade and millions of dollars to put in a bus lane it probably does. City dewellers will of course just use bikes if they can get their city to stop wasting money on far more expensive to maintain per person-mile car lanes.
All in all this problem needs a lot of complex legislation to solve, but I sopose the benefit of WAITING THIRTY FUCKING YEARS AFTER IT DECIDED THAT CONTINUED EMMISIONS WERE A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER TO THE VERY EXSISTANCE OF THE NATION is that most of the possibilities have already been tried before so you can pick what works and skip what doesn’t.
How about we go renewable instead?
What if we use the tax money to invest in renewables?
Perpetuates the problem. Tax the companies and those who profit from them out of existence, money for that and probably most other good things.
The two actions are not mutually exclusive.
Taxing carbon at its source is the only feasible way of doing a carbon tax, we have to get serious about this if we even pretend to care about the safety and national security threats that come with global warming, rising sea levels, severe/changing weather, etc.
Hooooray, change the incentives! That’s the only way to coax corporations into changing their behavior.
