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Re:Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn by yetanotherphd on Friday September 13, 2013 @05:01PM (#6383132)
The most important component of a strategy to reduce CO2 emissions is a carbon tax, which is economically equivalent to a cap-and-trade system. However, people involved in tech seem to be especially prone to what I call a "problem solving" bias: discrete problems require discrete solutions, and we just have to figure out if the right solution is solar, nuclear, or the Savory Institute. The (correct) economic point of view is that there are many possible solutions, and a carbon tax properly incentivizes implementing all of them.

On the issue of China, because their per capita emissions are so low, and any reasonable global cap and trade system would allocate CO2 emissions rights to countries on a per-capita basis (or at least per-capita indexed to some base year like 1960), China is not actually the bad guy, and under a fair cap and trade system they would be net sellers of CO2 credits not the other way around. However too many people are blinkered by anti-Sinitism to accept this fact.

Re:Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn by danielharan on Saturday September 14, 2013 @12:11AM (#6384627)
A carbon tax is a technocratic solution that requires far too much coordination.

One solution that works at a lower political level if densifying cities and making them walkable. See e.g. grist.org/carbon-zero/

Re:Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn by indefatigable on Friday September 13, 2013 @06:12PM (#6383513)
Giving politicians the authority to levy a carbon tax is an absolutely terrible idea, and it has nothing to do with how I feel about China.
Re:Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn by yetanotherphd on Friday September 13, 2013 @06:27PM (#6383587)
I believe that the idea that China is obstructing a global carbon tax (among supporters of such a tax) mainly comes from racism and is not supported by the facts. However, people oppose global/national carbon taxes for a number of reasons unrelated to racism. I'm not sure why you are concerned with the authority to levy a carbon tax, since (1) such a tax would almost certainly be beneficial and (2) politicians already have essentially unlimited legal authority to raise taxes of any sort.
Re:Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn by indefatigable on Friday September 13, 2013 @06:38PM (#6383633)
We seem to disagree, as I'm convinced that a carbon tax would almost certainly be an unmitigated disaster.
Re:Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn by rwallace on Friday September 13, 2013 @09:20PM (#6384236)
Why? I mean, as a moderate libertarian, I do tend to be suspicious of any proposal to give politicians more power, but given that sooner or later we are going to have to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, surely the best way is to levy a carbon tax and let the market find the most efficient ways to do the reduction?