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0 pointschiefofgxbxl5y ago0 comments

You don't need to measure the carbon cost of everything. You tax carbon at the source, like power generation and oil drilling. The costs will naturally balance upwards.

The downtown parking lot, for example, probably doesn't have recurring carbon costs. The gasoline people use to drive there will be more expensive from the carbon tax on oil and gasoline production, and the cement or asphalt that takes electricity to produce will be covered by the source-charge on power plants.

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bryanlarsen5y ago

That works for internal products, but not foreign ones. If you're importing from somewhere that also has a comparable carbon tax it's fine, but otherwise you have to apply the carbon tax to all imports.

Doing so also likely violates any free trade agreements you've signed.

It's a hard problem, but the gains are massive, so it's worth it.

It'll be a lot easier if a set of countries do this together.

snaily5y ago

To elaborate on that last point, one concrete model that was on the HN front page lately was the "climate club": https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.15000001

darawk5y ago

I think the solution here is likely to pass extra-onerous taxes on imports, and then tell the host countries "If you don't like it, apply the tax yourselves, and then we'll remove ours once we deem yours satisfactory".

coddle-hark5y ago

I dunno, that sounds like a trade war to me. If it were this easy there’d be no need for international diplomacy.

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