Carbon taxing works well when it's applied - but it's very hard to create the political consensus to impose it. For example, the high cost of fuel in Europe has driven cars to an average MPG equivalent of 45 versus the average of 33 in US. That's nothing to sneeze at, it's 40% more for a given amount of CO2 - and that's after the continous fuel efficiency improvements happening on both sides in recent decades: https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/files/2012/0...
However, the EU fuel taxes are not actually carbon taxes, they are road taxes. Imposing the same tax on industry and power generation, as pure carbon taxes, would have immense political blow back.
So I really wonder how do you think "ban all non-renewable electric stations and cement factories" would work if we can't even accept a 3-10% price increase on these products?
The US, having cheap gasoline, uses gasoline vehicles in far more roles than say, the EU does, where diesel is far more common. "Light commercial" might as well read "should have been diesel" from an MPG standpoint.
By the way, diesel is now typically more expensive than gasoline in Europe too, and the tax embodied in the price is roughly proportional to the carbon content of both. In the past there used to be a lower tax on diesel in some countries as an aid to farmers and the transport industry, but it is less common now.
Really? Which countries? Not in the european countries I'm familiar with.
At that point bans make more sense.
Also, not every 20% is the same. 20% reductions in emmisions because 20% of the fleet is electric-from-solar is a lot closer to 100% than 20% because of lighter cars and more efficient ICEs.
There are a lot of forces at play here, among others tax rates (which cause the F150 to get bigger and European cars to get lighter), fuel prices, culture (in Europe a big truck won't impress anyone, you get other types of cars for that), average and maximum distance traveled (in Europe nobody fantasizes about roadtrips), road conditions (high population density makes offroad driving less important in rural Europe than in rural America), etc
That's an interesting tidbit. I always thought that they did. I thought the automotive term "GT" meant "Grand Tour" and was European in inspiration.
That's what I get for culling most of my European auto culture information from Top Gear.
Even besides the German brands (VW, Mercedes, BMW), there are a huge number of European car manufacturers (Skoda, Peugeot, citroen) > showing ability and demand for cars in Europe. Also, the small size and mostly flat nature of Europe, cultural diversity, and longer vacation time all contribute to Europeans traveling more than Americans. Not to mention excellent roads, family/student hostels for less expensive trips (pre-Airbnb era) and obviously Visa free travel. So yes Europeans might not have the same idea of long distance road trips we have in the US but that is not to say they don't take the same trips or more than in the US
So how do you explain the countless German and Dutch cars driving around forests of Norway and Sweden every summer?
Even then, there are no American size cars. Most sold cars are European or Japanese station wagons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limousine#/media/File:98-02_Li...
So I assume you were using the "sedan" interpretation.
If we need to move mulch or the like, we rent/buy trailers.
This is a reflection of the vehicle platforms they're built on. You take a Civic or a Dart slap on AWD, a lift kit and extra 500-1000lb of body/interior and call it a CRV or a Cherokee and there's not much spare capacity left to haul cargo or tow trailers.
According to the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), Europe averaged 46 MPG (US gallons, "normalized to CAFE test cycles") in 2015 [1], compared to something like 37 MPG in the US.
This NY Times article [2] summarizes the report, with some nice graphs.
[1] https://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/201...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/03/climate/us-fu...
As far as I can tell taking a quick look at your links, the difference can be in two things. First, these are fuel economy standards companies are expected to hit, and not reporting on whether they hit them or missed and paid penalties. Second there's the phrase "Assumes manufacturers fully use low-GWP A/C refrigerants credits". Apparently fuel economy numbers are boosted by these credits--actual fuel economy isn't the same thing, it appears?
(EDIT: Overall fuel economy for cars and trucks combined was 24.8 mpg in MY2015 [1])
[1] https://phys.org/news/2016-11-average-fuel-economy-high-mpg....
The top 4 best-selling passenger cars are the Honda Accord and Civic, and the Toyota Camry and Corolla [1].
Their "combined city/highway" fuel efficiences are respectively 30, 34, 27, and 32 mpg for the base engine [2][3][4][5].
How can this possibly work out to 37 mpg overall? There aren't enough hybrid sales to bring that number up.
[1] http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2018/08/july-2018-ytd-u-s-passe... [2] https://www.edmunds.com/honda/accord/2017/features-specs/ [3] https://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/2017/features-specs/ [4] https://www.edmunds.com/toyota/camry/2017/features-specs/ [5] https://www.edmunds.com/toyota/corolla/2017/features-specs/
(Perhaps the mpgs were added up and divided by N? That doesn't always provide the answer you're looking for.)
> "skepticism" "It seems obvious"
Pick one please.
I am skeptical of the 37mpg claim because it seems clear to me that the average car sold in the US isn't that efficient. What's the contradiction?
I think 37mpg depends on what you actually count as a car and what goes for a light truck.
Anecdote: several years ago, I got the lightest, smallest-engined, most-efficient car I could find here in Canada, a Toyota Yaris. And using a calculator to convert units, I see that even so, it only gets me ~40 US MPG (real world) - most because of highway speeds. When I drive mostly 80km/hr, it's about 42 US MPG. When I drive mostly 120 km/hr, it's more like 36 US MPG. The same car is sold in Japan/EU with a 1.2 litre engine, vs the 1.5 litre in North America. Similar things happen with many other models.
However, as a sedan, I strongly dispute the "more space for passengers and cargo". The trunk is larger in the camry, but has severe limits that the Yaris, a hatchback, does not. Carrying a mini fridge, for example, is out of the question in a Camry, but easy in a Yaris (as long as you only have 1 or 2 passengers). Also, the camry has better rear-seat leg room, but much less height, such that my head (185cm) touches the roof in the back seats. Finally, the Yaris has better clearance for rough roads, and much better turning radius and visibility for city driving. (Oh, and my cost after 150000km, including purchase, fuel, and oil changes, is just approaching the purchase price of a Camry Hybrid)
I wish the Yaris Hybrid, available in Japan, was available in North America.
And I used to haul my 46" HDTV in my 99 Sentra, pretty sure it will fit in Camry too.
Camry is big for city driving. Moving to Seattle again reminds me how much better a Yaris can parallel park than my 'boat'.
I'm consistently driving 1100 miles a month on 28 gallons. This may change after the upcoming move, since walking will replace driving as primary transportation.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20...
Alas, the politics are made by city people (who have access to really good public transport) and paid for by people in suburbia who _have_ to own a car to survive (and no, we can't just move everyone to the city).
EDIT: typos
And yet the average age of the car in Denmark is 8.9 years [1]. For comparison Germany is at 9.3 year, and US is at 11.6 years [2]
[1] http://www.aut.fi/en/statistics/international_statistics/ave... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/261881/average-age-of-li...
But anyway, these average ages may be due to little used old cars being taken out of registry, to avoid annual fixed taxes? This has not much impact on the average age of cars used in daily traffic.
FWIW, I'm from Finland, also with a history of high car purchase taxes, and the average in above data is almost 12 years. The oldest cars, however, have lower annual car tax (they had the highest tax at purchase time).
BTW I understand Denmark was about to lower the car purchase tax from 180 % to 100 % or so?
As for your other argument - both reports count "vehicles in use" (ACEA) or "vehicles in operation" (US)
Also, the "vehicle in use" is not necessarily such a clear definition.
For instance, several of my colleagues own historical vehicles from 1960's and 1970's which are "museum registered", which here means that they must be at least 30 years old, can be used only on 30 days each year, and they are not subject to annual "MOT check" (but a different kind of check every 2-4 years).
Are they included in the "vehicle in use" statistic? I don't know. And I don't know what are the specific regulations for similar vehicles in other countries. Because the cars are 40-50 years old, even a not very big number of them would skew the statistics of average age of cars.
Renault actually advertised this at the time: "will rust like a fish", with a picture of a car immersed in water. Seems to be legitimate: corrosion problems have become much more rare.
This statement requires a bit more detail. It wasn't a flat tax rate, it was graduated, so below a certain price, there was a lower rate (105% IIRC), to incentivize smaller cheaper cars, and as a luxury tax on expensive vehicles.
As it is now, the rate is 85% below ~190K DKK and 150% of the value above that. The cutover has been steadily going up over a couple of years now.
So no, it has not ever been a flat 180%, as some people like to claim. It's still high, but there are tons of cars out there that don't hit the tax cutover point, even family cars.
Edit: And the rates are lower for motorcycles, hybrid cars and such.
I have been wondering for a little while now if the extreme libertarian position on private roads has been vindicated. I am not sure yet, but it seems possible where once it was ridiculous.
Starting with (let us say) World war two, cities and states built out substantial, publicly funded roads and road networks in order to connect up newly developed sub-urban centres that were designed for car owners. These new centres were affordable for the emerging middle classes, who migrated there en-masse. This co-incided with the baby-boom, which was partly possible due to cheap housing.
But this left the inner cities to die slow deaths where immigration was not high. (Side note: This is more true of American towns, in Australia I don't know that we had the dramatic changes seen in the highly industrialised centres of the USA.) So it possibly boosted the middle class at the expense of the lower class (?) and it created huge urban sprawl.
Would private roads, paid for collectively by the developers or residents of those suburbs, have helped to alleviate or reduce the problems outlined above?
I am spitballing here, and it is a little off-topic, but please indulge me!
I live here and have to pay the tolls but I still prefer it from a "user pays" justice POV.
It doesn't have to be privatized though - Singapore is introducing a GPS-distance-based congestion charge on their roads ("ERP 2" if you want to Google it)
In the United States, it was somewhat more complex than that. The highway network was and is primarily part of the nation's military defense infrastructure, so that weapons and personnel can be moved around in a time of crisis. (Something from Germany that impressed the U.S. during WWII.)
This is why the system is named after a general who was also a president ("The Eisenhower Interstate Highway System").
It's also the reason why the rails are not usually removed from abandoned railroads anymore: So they can be rehabbed in an emergency.
There's also a lot of social studies involved, including the baby boom.
Like all large human endeavors, it's messy.
[Edit to add:]
Would private roads, paid for collectively by the developers or residents of those suburbs, have helped to alleviate or reduce the problems outlined above?
One of the many contributing factors to the U.S. Civil War was the notion that the North wanted to shed its remaining privatized roads and federalize the whole thing, while the South wanted entirely private road systems.
You are right. I am not contesting the Highway system, which actually still seems to be a good case for Federal public spending, both because it benefits the military and because it is inter-state.
My point is entirely regarding the roads that were built out from the dense urban cores to connect with sub-urbs, and the roads built to connect sub-urbs with one another, and those inside of suburbs too. If these were paid for by those who used them (and not inner-city dwellers) then perhaps urban sprawl would not have happened, and we would have saved ourselves from a whole host of externalities we are only discovering now.
Well, they are. That's the 9/10th of a cent that drivers pay on each gallon of gas they purchase.
IMO, it should be closer to an even five cents, with half of it going to mass transit. But then I also drank milk and Pepsi mixed together when I was a kid, so I'm not exactly reliable.
There are also state gasoline taxes, vehicle weight fees (for commercial interstate trucks) registration fees, and tolls[2].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Trust_Fund 2. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/07/us-transporta...
https://www.audi.com/content/dam/com/EN/corporate-responsibi...
The problem is that the fossil fuel lobby has been exceptionally successful in putting the transition back by 30 years. Had they expended the same energy pivoting to green power then we'd be having a totally different discussion now.
As they have as well a direct interest in saying "buying new/our cars isn't that harmful as you think", their doc makes me even more sceptic... :)
Those 3 year old cars aren't just scrapped, the used car market is much larger than the new car market.
It would be the equivalent of banning steam engines, which although no longer in normal use, are still running as tourist attractions and remarkable pieces of engineering that are fantastic to see and experience.
Given that we still allow horses and Model T's on the roads (aside from freeways, due to inability of century-old cars to maintain that speed), I can't imagine why we'd bother banning them. The nostalgia is nice and their impact is negligible.
California: 1992.
Do you have any sources for this claim? I think I only know of a single person who changes cars in 3 years due to leases and only did it once.
According to the US government the average age is 11, almost 12 years.[1]
[1]https://www.bts.gov/content/average-age-automobiles-and-truc...
If you live in the countryside and rarely visit towns, it's a reasonable choice. If you regularly drive slowly through a city, it's awful!
I've been told that there are people who trade their cars in when the tires are worn out - it kicks the payments down the road a month (they have to budget next month lower than this month, but it doesn't use cash they don't have) Remember, nearly anyone can get a car loan no matter how bad their credit is. Even a credit card has higher standards. Since we are talking about people who are bad with money it is at least believable.
Had a 14 year old car... 225k miles on it... a couple years ago had put in $1k or so, but the last 18 month had put in less than $500 in repairs (tires, oil changes, some other issues).
However, there was an oil leak, and some damage to front-end suspension. Oil leak had been going on for a while, but getting worse. Finding it would have meant taking the engine apart, and the front-end stuff was also expensive. Even without the engine leak, I was looking at probably $1500 to get this to pass inspection this year, and... there's no guarantee that all the fixes wouldn't have left me with something with a broken transmission that needed an overhaul or replacement. Fixing it all would probably have been north of $3k to feel good that it would be road worthy for at least another few years.
As much as a I hate change, I bit the bullet, and got a 'newer' car for $11k. 'used' but still relatively new (2016) and it's far more fuel efficient - getting around 40mpg vs the 25 I was getting before. The fuel efficiency won't totally make up for the entire diff in fixing vs replacing, but I have something that's more modern, more comfortable, gets better mileage and better safety features. The 'brand new car' comparison - yeah, but loads of people are fine getting a 'lightly used' car vs 'brand new'.
A friend went through similar decision within 10 days of my process, and he ended up getting a lightly used car (2017?) but it was $21k - I just can't bring myself to pay that type of money for a car right now. I was looking sub $10k; my wife pushed me to go a little higher.
"intended to provide economic incentives to U.S. residents to purchase a new, more fuel-efficient vehicle when trading in a less fuel-efficient vehicle."
I'm curious, do you think the whole idea of a market-based solution is bad, or do you just think that actual real-world implementations have been lacking so far?
I mean, it seems to me that if you tax emissions strongly and uniformly enough, then at some point it has to have an impact. I think existing schemes have just been pretty weak.
I agree that carbon taxes can potentially hit poor and middle class folks unfairly hard, but this can easily be solved via carbon dividend type schemes.
One way to look at that is that you're saying any market-based solution strong enough to be effective is indistinguishable from an outright ban.
We could, for example, discourage smoking by putting a $500 tax on each pack of cigarettes. But at that point, you may as well stop pretending and ban it outright.
Another way to look at it is that bans are fair because they apply to all people equally. Taxes unfairly punish the poor who have less discretionary income. (A $100 tax on cigarettes would drive most of the working and middle classes to quit, but there are certainly a number of rich folks who would keep on lighting up because $100 means little to them.)
I'm not sure I agree. I could easily imagine a range of carbon taxes applied to vehicles where most, but not all, users would switch to electric. There could easily be people who like taking long trips far from major roads and are willing to pay a large premium to do so.
> Another way to look at it is that bans are fair because they apply to all people equally. Taxes unfairly punish the poor who have less discretionary income. (A $100 tax on cigarettes would drive most of the working and middle classes to quit, but there are certainly a number of rich folks who would keep on lighting up because $100 means little to them.)
That's a fair point, but I'm not sure your example is all that compelling. If a small number of rich people are willing to pay $100 in extra taxes to smoke a cigarette, is that really so bad?
What is the rational to "letting" the rich smoke (replace with activity "X" if desired), but not everyone else?
For the most part, that is what the policy effectively ends up doing, and so enacting it becomes to an implicit approval of that result.
It's obviously not the only way of looking at the situation, but I think it has some merit. Interesting to think about, at least.
Implies everyone is in the same situation. This is never true. For example, in WW2 we had gas rationing. You got a fixed amount of gas, regardless of how much driving you needed to do. The result was a black market in gas, where those who didn't need all their alotment sold it to those who did (at black market prices, of course, since this was illegal).
I like capitalism, but I view it as a means to an end, not an end in itself. Instead of evaluating our moral against what capitalism produces, we should evaluate capitalism by how well it supports our morals.
From that perspective, yeah, I think it is kind of bad. If we are placing a high tax on cigarettes because our society has made a moral choice that cigarettes are bad and people who smoke are bad, then I think that moral choice should apply equally to all people regardless of wealth. My moral code states that power does not excuse sins.
On the other hand, if the tax is a pragmatic one to, say, help pay for universal healthcare and offset the higher medical costs incurred by smokers, then the tax is a reasonable approach.
In reality, the tax/law is probably a combination of the two goals, which is why I think a tax is kind of bad but kind of OK.
For every dollar that is raised from taxing gasoline, is another dollar that can be used paying for social programs or whatever.
Look, for example, at civil seizure in the US. Police agencies are highly incentivized to do it since they get to keep the money, even when doing so is unjust.
In practice, tax-based solutions have pros and cons and you need to think about the incentives and unintended consequences that they lead to on both the enforcement and citizen sides. Law-based solutions do too, of course.
My theory is that the people push for market based solutions the most are usually the same people that are against regulations and taxes so whatever they come up with will usually be very weak. They certainly won't support taxation of carbon emissions to the degree that's necessary for real behavior.
I also support the idea of reducing other taxes in concert, so the tax is revenue neutral.
Most existing schemes seem to have been cleverly designed to avoid hitting certain industries with large enough lobbying power.
Taxing/banning/regulating specific polluters rather than pollution itself is just ripe for regulatory capture.
I do think that making stuff more market based to avoid "picking winners" is probably a bad idea. We know what the winner is here, more or less. The winner is non-ICE vehicles. We should be backing that, not 25% more efficient engines.
Bans are just as messy because what is and isn't subject to he ban results in just as much hair splitting as a complicated policy in the first place.
When we "ban" things there are almost always trade-offs. It makes sense to allow market hunting in some cases (wild hogs, whitetail deer in some areas). There's a case to be made for allowing the use of lead paint in some industrial applications.
Not true. From personal experience driving an electric costs one fifth the cost of fuel per km. That's an enormous saving.
It looks like in Denmark electricity prices were 0.30 EUR (0.35 USD) per kWh in the second half of 2017, while gasoline prices are currently 12.26 DKK per liter (7.15 USD per US gallon).
I kinda leave the European prices out of the discussion because what they pay tends to be extremely distorted by local taxes.
Based on a quick bit of TCO research, best I can tell is that without subsidies, EVs tend to have a TCO significantly higher than an efficient ICE vehicle. The market is young, obviously, and lots of EVs are aimed at people willing to pay a premium. A Model S, for example, has a TCO over five years of nearly 70 grand (!!). But, a Chevy Spark EV has a TCO of more like 20 grand, which is really showing how cheap they were due to GM dumping them at a loss and the big tax credit. A Prius is around 30K or so, for comparison.
I want an electric, and will get one as soon as there is something in the right price range with the characteristics I'm interested in (sporty, decent looking, sufficient range, reliable, good ergonomics). The Model 3 isn't too bad but it's more than I want to spend on a first-run car, and I won't buy any car with a single touchscreen as the sole interface.
I don't buy new cars and I don't drive very much in the first place. It's not worth it for me to go electric at present, despite access to cheap electricity and relatively high gas prices here. I'm hopeful that by the time my 2007 Camry is at end-of-life there will be affordable, reliable used EVs.
not really. They just migrate faster to Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
Do this and a massive chunk of the population will die shortly after. There is no alternative to farm and transport food at the scale required for the modern population.
Banning CFCs isn't even comparable because all of modern civilization wasn't built on them like it has been with the portable energy enabled by ICE.
There is no viable electric-only solution for the freight rail network, the air freight network, or even the road freight network.
We’re going go have to come up with creative solutions when most vehicles are electric.
Same mechanism can work for electric cars
A carbon emissions tax is the right solution. Just keep raising it until one gets the effect wanted - a wholesale switch to electric.
I've come around though. I think all the bastardized carbon accounting, market based solutions are on average quite bad. The idea of a neutral, "market decides" policy is a myth. These things are complex, and that compmexity is an opportunity for regulatory capture.
For example, most European vehicle tax codes have been altered to reflect emissions.
The upshot is that (1) new vehicles are 20% ish more efficient (2) older vehicles become uneconomical faster (3) people who drive older vehicles clear pay more tax. (4) Switching from a 10yr old ICE hatchback to a new one can easily save you $500 pa. Going from a new "efficient" ICE to an electric will save you a fraction of that.
New car buyers pay less tax, old cars pay more. Vehicles hit junkyards faster. Manufacturers sell more cars. Over a decade we'll see a minor (maybe 20% at best) decrease in carbon emissions.
Very little environmental juice for a lot of poor and middle class squeeze. A nice little sales boost for VW.
There's a lot to be said for the simplicity of an outright ban. Ban ICEs. Ban commercial fishing. It worked for CFCs and market hunting. In retrospect, no one wishes we had split hairs with a complicated policy.