If only we had a uniform, slowly ramping global $100/ton carbon tax. From the models I've seen it would fairly abruptly correct all of these "two methods are vastly different in carbon emissions but otherwise fairly comparable" situations.

abdolutely. Industry is known to lie about its ability to cope with even slight changes in price structure when asked. Even though things like tripling of oil prices mostly change if people buy v4 or v6 engines. A small yearly increase that that companies can price into their plans will absolutely not destroy our economy

The carbon tax should be tied to the price of extracting a ton of carbon from the atmosphere.

In Norway there's taxation on drinks containers that is set high enough that it's cheaper to participate in a return scheme. The audited return/recycling/reuse rates are then used to provide a discount against the per-unit tax.

I've always liked this scheme, because assuming you set the tax high enough for society to - as a fallback - take action to rectify the problem (e.g. hiring more people to clean up in this case), with a punitive margin on top, the tax provides a financial incentive to innovate to drive down the cost of acting responsibly.

There is a collective return service you can participate in, but if you find a better alternative you're free to use it as long as you can demonstrate what your return rate is. Or you can pay the tax and leave it to the government, but your margins will be worse than the competitions, as the return scheme is cheaper.

The general mechanism feels like it'd be adaptable to a lot of situations where you want to make sure it gets rectified, but also don't want to trust the government to dictate specific solutions - in this case it doesn't matter if e.g. the fallback solution is severely cost-ineffective; the more costly the fallback is, the stronger the financial incentive to find a better solution is.

Aircraft fuel should be taxed to a similar level as that used for ground transportation.

> You speak as if you were a toddler.

This sort of response isn't acceptable here. I would suggest you rephrase.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Nah. He wasn't calling me a toddler and even if he was I'm actually a big boy and can handle such abuse.

I respectfully disagree. The specific part quoted by you is substantial, not ad hominem, and not name-calling. I accept that it's confrontational but not more so, (and not more offensive to me) than the statement it is in response to:

> Nobody should be expected to make a personal sacrifice to do the right thing.

A toddler can't be expected to do the right thing, but you wouldn't let your ten year old get away with this, would you? "I can't be expected to clean my room when it's sunny outside!".

I am calling out the normalization of irresponsibility here with a re-contextualization. I am not calling the person I respond to a toddler, nor treating them as one.

Everyone "should be", but the reality is that everyone isn't. A fairly small proportion of us have the time, energy and motivation to research the best decision for any given situation.

So it is totally reasonably to argue for making the right choice the obvious one, e.g. by externalising the costs of bad choices. It doesn't help until there's a majority for it, as you point out, but one way to build public support is to build awareness and criticise the current situation.

It seems like you completely agree with what I wrote then?

But you can't fix structural problems by individual behavior. It's like peeing into a house fire.

Political campaigning and change is how you change things.

Of course, for this you first need to win people's minds. But that's just the first step.

In the four lines I wrote, I talk about the states responsibility and about the importance to pass stronger legislation to change things.

I never claimed that you can fix structural problems by individual behaviour. I claimed that you can't fix them without (some) changes to individual behaviour.

Political change never just happens without activists pushing for it. And in order to understand the space they are pushing for, you need both, leading by example and credibility in asking people to pass laws that mandate behavioural changes.

Finally, I see no evidence for the idea that pushing outside the political sphere can not also lead to societal and behavioural change. Meat consumption is way down among younger people. Car ownership is down, too. This is in all likelihood to slow. But if we ever hope to change laws in cities to get rid of cars where they are not needed, well then having a large chunk of the population cycling and using public transport, and having had a gradual build out of alternative infrastructure due to this chunk of the population is going to make things politically a lot easier.

The same logic applies to divestment. If a large enough number of individual actors divest from carbon extraction, the politics of it change dramatically. And once enough people signal by divesting that they believe that the political change will come (thereby making carbon stocks worthless), they can trigger others into such behaviours.

Arguing for political action always has my vote. It's probably one of the best ways to use your time. But arguing against adjusting your behaviour is cynical and lazy. And arguing against people on here advocating for others to change their behaviour is actively arguing against political action. Because that is what political action actually looks like on the ground.

I'm simply being pragmatic. If that worked, if every intelligent being did the right thing we wouldn't have any problems at all, would we? Most people know that driving a single occupant car to work every day is silly. But what can they do? Completely change their lifestyle while everyone else continues to operate as normal? Make a personal sacrifice for the benefit of those making no sacrifice at all?

It will never work from the bottom up even if everyone agrees what the right thing is.

You're just ignoring the second half of my statement entirely. Changing your behaviour and taking political action to change the context of our behaviour are two sides of the same coin. If you're not willing to change your own behaviour, how are you expecting to change the states?

This just ends up with you declaring: It's someone else problem to make me.

That's not pragmatic. Unless you personally invest time and effort into political change to address these issues, it's just lazy and irresponsible.

Just own that. I have adjusted some behaviours and still fall short in many other areas. Never said it was easy. But here is actually an example where it is easy. Take the train and little cost in time and money, while gaining comfort and productive time. And you're saying you can't even be expected to do that? That's just cynical and irrational.

I am willing, but only if everyone else is too. I think that's how most people feel.

When it comes to what transport mode is best for the environment I basically am a toddler. I don't actually know what's best. I need to be told what's best by one having a prohibitively high price.

I don't even need to claim that it won't work, I can just point to evidence and you can see: it does not work. People are taking the plane because they can afford to.

You are responsible for what you do in your life. What other people do you have no responsibility for at all.

Today, a lot of people don't take responsibility for their actions because nobody external is telling them to. This is being a toddler. You wait for some parent figure to tell you that you have to do something when you dont want to.

Today, most of the western world are toddlers and its being programmed into us through movies and games as well. Because this is a state of mind that is super easy to control. You end up in consumer mode, wanting things that make your life easier. :)

> What other people do you have no responsibility for at all.

I might have no responsibility for it, but it affects me. If I choose to cycle to work I'll be a second class citizen on the road while people in cars pass me with little regard to my life. Why would I choose this? Why would anyone choose this? The answer is there is no reason to choose it, so people don't.

Unfortunately, we also live in a capitalist society where if you do something less “productive” than the next person, guess which person will have more opportunities?