The problem with that is that while it does fall primarily on the rich, as they consume and therefore pollute more, it falls also on the poor and middle class, and as we’ve seen in France, this can be the basis for substantial political opposition, which if nothing else will act against our ability to price the pollution effectively.
The solution for this is to return the source fuels tax funds to the people, such that the tax is revenue neutral. The carbon dividend leaves lower income and less pollutive people better off financially, in addition to everyone being better off environmentally and health-wise, providing a natural basis for the survival of the carbon tax.
This is the approach the Citizen’s Climate Lobby is fighting for: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/ https://energyinnovationact.org/
It has the support of Presidential candidates including Booker and Buttigieg: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/2020-candidates-climate-cha...
So long as the nett overall emissions are down and decreasing it matters little. You ensure that by setting the rate of the carbon tax high enough. Perhaps an accumulating rate.
On the other hand, if a tree can be planted to capture 1 ton of carbon for 50 cents each, then a flight from NY to Sydney can be offset with $130.[1] That's about $1 per person on a 100-person flight.
Some environmentalists claim that the social cost of carbon is $40 per ton of CO2[2]. That comes out to about $10,500 in taxes for a flight from NY to Sydney. That's basically $100 per person on a 100-person flight, enough to prevent many people from flying.
[1] 53 lbs of CO2 per mile of flight, multiplied by 9,929 miles from NY to Sydney, divided by 2000 lbs/ton, times $0.50 of offset costs per ton
It’s like fixing a leaky pipe by adding sponges. Sure, they’ll soak up the water and are cheap, but eventually you will run out of space for new sponges and have to pay for a plumber.
I'm all for building wooden houses. But I can also imagine the amount of work (=> energy consumption) needed to convert theses trees we need to plant to "offset emissions" as new houses.
Transport the workers, feed the machines to chop the trees, the machines to transport the wood, to run the lumber-mill, to transport to the construction site etc. Unfortunately for now we still have: feeding machines => energy consumption => emissions
We can argue that this energy would have been needed anyway to build new houses. However I find it dangerous to couple a carbon reduction strategy to a substantial amount of an activity involving machines (construction). Are we going to need the amount of houses at the scale of the amount of trees we need to plant? In all parts of the world concerned (we don't want to move trees across the world anymore..)?
What's to say it wont be slashed and burnt to make room for agriculture? What's to say the surplus of timber wont decrease the price and cause less trees to be planted elsewhere?
The way to sequester carbon with trees is to cut them down when they're grown, and bury them somewhere where there's no air and no one will touch them for thousands of years, or otherwise store them in perpetuity while preventing decay or burning.
It's not impossible that we could grow a huge number of trees, and bury the resulting wood in a mountain-side to offset burning coal - but the amount of wood we'd need to bury might be prohibitively large.
(We've buried much worse things than wood :) ).
I don't think there are many trans-Pacific flights with just 100 people on board.
The last flight I took on Singapore Air was around 350 people. So the tax would be about $30 per person. Certainly not enough to prevent people from flying.
Emirates has A380's with 615 people on board. That's just $17 per passenger.
That’s fine. The point isn’t the dictate what people do. It’s to offset their negative externalities.
The issue with offsetting is that it's not actually enough. The idea is basically to help less developed economies grow in a more sustainable way.
But we could delete the entire developing world and still be emitting too much, so capture and/or reduction are necessary, yes.
Planting trees (and removing the carbon they capture from the carbon cycle, e.g. by turning them into biochar) probably doesn't scale to the amount of carbon we release.
I don't see how that follows. On the assumption that we don't have infinite taxes in general, every $1 raised via a tax on emissions from flying can be put in to offsetting, capture, or research which wouldn't otherwise.
> That's basically $100 per person on a 100-person flight, enough to prevent many people from flying.
It's unclear to me what you mean by this. I think you mean that it would likely reduce demand? Sure, bonus.
That’s very...optimistic of you. I wish I had the same trust in these systems.
Regardless I highly doubt there will be a global movement to kill air travel any time soon, there’s no world gov to implement this mass tax so it will have to be a few very brave souls who do it while trying to convince everyone it won’t result in a massive brain and money drain which will be multiple x bigger than the tax “return”. Not to mention lost productivity.
Asia and the US (I’m assuming EU would be the first) will suddenly sound like a far better place to live and do business, then there will be a ton of disincentives to follow suit.
Remember when France was going to do their millionaire tax? That didn’t last long once the consequences became apparent and they could be dismissed with campaign slogans.
Airlines already apply "fuel surcharges" as part of their ticketing.
Adding a, for example, EU-wide tax on outbound flights based on the distance of origin/destination, would be one way of implementing.
Getting international agreement on, for example, having it apply only to outbound flights, would mean that is not a tax on imports, that could be considered a tariff.
The income could then be spent on subsidizing the other costs of decarbonization.
If you start your argument with an extremified and overly emotional premise, then sure, you can make just about any point you want.
I think it makes sense for that tax to be progressive, at least initially.
Heating a home for a year depending on climate may produce more emissions than taking a flight. But one is much harder to avoid (particularly if you are in a precarious economic situation).
Even from a purely utilitarian point of view, it would stave off political unrest.
Everyone always has these grand market distorting schemes and they inevitably fail at the real goal.
While yes, generally driving generates less carbon than flying, If you have fewer than 3 people in your car however, flying puts out less carbon.
I think there is a good argument for a fixed rate taxation however that makes shorthaul (less than 300 mile) flights wildly unprofitable, thus pushing people into other forms of transportation (ideally train or bus - but probably car)
If we reduce the number of people doing a thing, then by definition, the rich will be the last ones left doing it, because that's what makes them rich, yes.
> If you have fewer than 3 people in your car however, flying puts out less carbon.
As far as I can tell this isn't the case. It probably depends on whether you're talking about massive American cars or a 100g/CO2 car that's more common in Europe though.
But yeah, people won't make those journeys. It really took off recently (oho) and should just go away again. We don't need Ryanair flights around Europe for student budgets.
I'll point out, we don't have as many short range flights as Europe does, and no equivalent to Ryan Air here.
If flying cost twice as much, then people would, at the limit, be able to fly half as often as they do now.
If they valued their vacation more than other stuff they could just do it anyway, assuming we're talking about the same "middle class" (e.g. not the poor that spend to their max).
But yeah, the whole point is to reduce luxury travel. Jetset vacations are a luxury. We might be able to make them cheap and clean in the future, right now offsetting has a real cost.
The current shinkansen reaches 200mph, with in-development versions going faster.
Distance from NYC to LA is 2790 miles (by highway; the straight-line distance is shorter). That’s a bit under 14 hours at 200mph.
That’s pretty much the worst case; most people aren’t flying cross-country on a regular basis, and regional flights (e.g. Columbus to Chicago) are a big business.
Obviously real trains would be slower than peak shinkansen speeds, but like most train opponents, you are severely exaggerating your argument.
It isn't just about choosing to take a pleasure vacation or not, but seeing close family and friends that often aren't in the same state.
In terms of passenger km/l, air flight is very efficient, so spreading the tax proportionally across the passengers would not be a major impost on existing prices.
Aside from that - sure, there are taxes on flying. Are they enough to offset or capture the carbon emissions (at a rate higher than 100% if we want this to be progressive), and is the money going towards either doing that or researching future methods of how to do that?
Why should we tax any more than required to offset or capture emissions just 1 time over?
Ideally in the long term everything would be taxed precisely according to its' externalities.
In the short term it makes sense to have a progressive system that more heavily taxes luxuries so that the poor don't get thrown under the bus (read: throw you under the bus).
You realise there's probably millions of foreign workers in various countries around the world who move abroad to support their families and flying is the only way for them to see their families.
For most people flying is anything but a luxury. Most people are flying in economy for business reasons that they have to do if they want to earn an income.
Companies engage in huge amounts of wasteful travel.
Business passengers are the majority of airline profits. Airlines will gladly fly economy class half empty as long as the business class seats are sold out. Hell, some airlines have the business and premium economy cabin taking up over half the plane's available square footage.
Economy class passengers are most negativity affected by the tax, yet this is unlikely to change airline behavior.
As a result, you'll increase travel via car and the net result will be increased pollution at the expense of the economy.
A bog standard 100g/km car would emit 600kg to go 6000km; a passenger flying London-New York also emits approximately the same. (Obviously you can't drive London-NY, it's an example).
Short haul, as you say, it tips in favour of the car. Multiple people and it becomes a no brainer.
Then take into account the fact that tons of journeys would simply not happen. It's common for people to jet around Europe for weekend trips. No-one would drive that.
I have a sense that US domestic flights tend to skew discussion on this.
Really? I'm livid I pay much more tax than those with a net worth much higher than mine. Real estate has all the tax benefits in my country, while gainful employment is punished.
It's broken in the UK as well. Capital gains taxes are tiny as compared to income. :P
Taxing income or capital gains in the first place was a mistake.
I’m actually surprised by this since I assumed 99% of people are ok with progressive taxation. I believe the real argument lies in how progressive it is, as the extreme limit leads to the wealthy paying 99% of the taxes. I think currently the 1% pay 50% of the taxes in the US so the sliding scale it more towards progressivism anyways. You could argue how much more you can squeeze vs. the repercussions of such.
I think it makes sense to just whack a huge tax on flying. Right, you can't easily cross continents without flying, but I imagine the percentage of flights that are being made for super crucial stuff like say, unwell relatives, is a low percentage of the total.
So whilst we're in this transition period, tax it enough that you can offset or capture the emissions a few times over. It's a no-brainer. You don't even encounter the "but what about those in poverty" problem because flying is the quintessential luxury.
edit: I should be clear, as responders seem to misunderstand me, that the mechanism I prefer would be to tax according to emissions. I just think that flying should have a multiplier because it's primarily used for leisure or non-essential business travel.
My preference would be for the taxes to be used on actual carbon capture / storage / research rather than being redistributed, and in that model you need to pull more out of the top end because otherwise the poor eat fuel taxes and get nothing back.