Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by parasubvert on Monday January 21, 2019 @10:39AM (#18961031)

A major segment of the US populace is supporting policy to remove all polluting regulations , dismantle the EPA, and would scream murder over a Carbon tax the same way “conservatives” in Canada are over Federal plans.

They’re not evil overlords cackling, but rather they’re in mass denial over a zero sum scientific equation, and have created a cult around their disbelief that’s as strong as any environmental group. If you understand science, from that sense, they’re definitely acting like tragic villains.

I wish it were so easy, that all environmentalists would need to do is admit they’ve overreached sometimes and been alarmist on the timeline etc, and people will see the reason in ideas like carbon taxes.

That’s not the experience I see out there. People are treating carbon taxes as the equivalent of communist invasion and an immoral affront to free society, rather than a conservative policy idea. (Similar to the healthcare debate)

I suppose there will always be people in the middle that could swing either way, they’re our main hope.

But I think it’s not helpful to scold “both sides” as you do above, equating over-eager environmentalists with those that want to accelerate our pollution and use of fossil fuels for short term gain. One is a misdemeanour, the other is quite literally contributing to global destabilization. Global warming in the next 75 years is leading to a wave of refugee immigration the world has never seen before (that a large segment of the populace also currently would reject and let starve). Germany has been poltically destabilized by 2 million Syrians. What happens when 1 billion or more are knocking on Europe and the US’s doors? I only wish I was overstating this for effect.

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Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by BurningFrog on Monday January 21, 2019 @12:28PM (#18961863)

A carbon tax is actually the conservative solution to climate change.

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Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by jeffbax on Monday January 21, 2019 @12:46PM (#18962007)

A carbon tax is really the only immediately workable and impactful solution to climate change. We can't flip a switch and have the change activists want overnight. That both parties have abandoned a revenue-neutral carbon tax (sell it to the people as a replacement for other taxes, like payroll, rather than a new tax) is of the worst policy realities we have found ourselves in.

"Green New Deal" is a bunch of hysterics going nowhere fast, and the counter point are a bunch of idiots that think a snowstorm is proof global warming doesn't exist.

We've lost the boring middle ground solution that works, just like so many other areas of policy.

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Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by ams6110 on Monday January 21, 2019 @01:33PM (#18962354)

One problem is that the public "sales pitch" for a new tax is almost always a lie when compared to what the money is actually spent on and loopholes and exemptions that are never disclosed up front. Nobody believes that a carbon tax will achieve or change anything other than taking more of their money.

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Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by parasubvert on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @01:42PM (#18970995)

But see, that's a misunderstanding of what a carbon tax is for. The federal government could burn that money and the carbon tax would still be effective. It's about pricing carbon into the market for goods and services, full stop. We are otherwise subsidizing our own self-destruction (or, more specifically, the heightened risk of destruction of our coastal cities, heightened risk of extreme weather, and forced migration of a billion+ brown poeple that live closer to the equator).

In other words, it absolutely is a money grab. That's the point!

Would it be better if that money went to useful programs? Absolutely! Same as the rest of our tax dollars.

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Re:Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters by jeffbax on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @04:47PM (#18983419)

That's why you pass it with a measurable, visible reduction in other taxes -- "revenue neutral"

Which is generally what Democrats don't want to do b/c its not raising taxes, and Republicans don't want to do b/c its not lowering taxes… but it'd sure go a long way to actually incentivizing heavy CO2 producers to change their ways that multilateral, international agreements have so far failed terribly at actually accomplishing anything about.

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