Re:Apocalyptic Claims About Climate Change Are Wrong
by shkkmo on Wednesday November 27, 2019 @11:12AM
(#21649090)
> we’ll start emitting less carbon dioxide (good!) But we’ll lose out on much of this “subsidy”, too.
You mean we will have to pay less to deal with the health effects of air pollution and and the economic effects of global warming? I'm not clear what subsidy we "miss out on" here.
Re:Apocalyptic Claims About Climate Change Are Wrong
by wutbrodo on Wednesday November 27, 2019 @02:57PM
(#21651443)
I agree that pricing the externalities is fairly counted, but the GP comment framing it as a subsidy is still dishonest: someone could easily read that Stat and decide that you can add the $N trillion from carbon tax revenue to the $5T in removed subsidy, and they'd end up overcounting by about $4.5T
with under-charging for domestic air pollution accounting for about half of the total subsidy and global warming about a quarter.
I’m not completely against calling the huge unpriced externality of carbon emissions a “subsidy”; but markets are reactive and once we start charging a carbon tax, we’ll start emitting less carbon dioxide (good!) But we’ll lose out on much of this “subsidy”, too.