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France calls for minimum price on European flights
(techxplore.com)
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this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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A carbon tax does a better job at incentivizing low-carbon alternatives at all scales, from trains and more efficient airplanes down to e-bikes.
the carbon tax for one kg should be set at 110% the cost to remove one kg, 100% to completely remove it, and 10% to help remove past emissions, which statistically the emitter probably emitted pre-tax anyways
The problem is that for fossil fuels, there is no good way to "completely remove" them. Most of the "carbon neutral" ads are plain greenwashing. But taxing it would be a good step nonetheless.
Put these taxes into research?
From what we know about physics and chemistry so far, it looks like there is no magical way to reverse this, that wouldn't require a huge amount of energy, resources and effort. Also, it's a bit to late to put money into research now. We know what to to do and how to "fix" things but we don't like the consequences so we (mostly) keep going as if nothing is wrong.
Carbon capturing is certainly possible. It isn’t worth it economically yet. Further research should make it cheaper. Meanwhile we will (hopefully) increase the CO2 tax. At some point it becomes economically worthwhile and companies will emerge to earn that money.
I didn't say it's not possible. I said it's not possible to undo what we've done and what we're still doing. It won't be fixed by removing the excessive CO2 from the atmosphere. Besides, I also think that it's not feasible at the required scale.
Well, there's some issues with carbon offsetting and the promises made by the involved companies. But that's more of a regulatory issue.
For now you can indeed offset your emissions very cheaply by paying NGOs like atmosfair (i.e. one of the NGOs that has working programs). What they do is finding issues where emissions can be avoided cheaply and then funding projects to avoid these emissions. Obviously, that wouldn't work if everyone (or even a large enough share) of people tried to offset their emissions, but right now and at the margin is a very efficient way to decrease emissions. Hence I wouldn't be too critical of it. Offsetting won't safe us in the long run, but it will buy us some time to implement sustainable solutions.
I don't know the details but how you describe it, it sounds like it doesn't reduce the emissions but shift them from one piece of paper to another one. Isn't that still exactly greenwashing? I pay someone to make a 3rd party reduce their emissions so that I can fill that gap again.
If you do that, sure, then we have a problem. But so do you, since you may end up in jail. If you call a product carbon neutral in your advertising, you'll need to have a reason to believe that all emissions from that product were offset, otherwise you're guilty of fraud. So - in the context of that product - there's no legal way to start emissions again. Obviously in practice there's a lot of wiggle room regarding what emissions can be attributed to your product and how well the offset works and you'll have in dubio pro reo on your side, but in principle offsetting actually erases the entire carbon footprint of a product.
We're not speaking about emission rights here. In those cases, yes, shifting them from one entity to another doesn't directly decrease emissions but it still helps since it makes emissions more expensive and therefore leads to companies looking for ways to avoid them.
Edit: The 3rd parties in case of emission offsetting don't tend to be limited by emission rights. We're talking about thing like giving solar cookers to farmers in the developing word. That example these people an option to avoid using coal and helps with the climate, but it also helps them avoid the health problems that come with coal fires.
You do not have linear costs of removal. Just letting nature be has no additional costs, but in the amount necessary extreme opportunity costs.
Technical systems might have a theoretical cost, but practically any energy put into removing CO2 from the atmosphere is much better put into not using fossil fuels to produce energy for a different purpose.
Meanwhile the cost estimates for the damages incurred are in regions of 200-500 €/tonne now. So unless we also properly tax imports and other countries also do carbon taxing, it will be the death to any industry.
An increasing carbon tax is an important instrument, but it can only be part of many measures, most importantly ramping up the renewable production by all means.
France is trying to set up something like that for electric vehicle.
They want to stop subsidizing electric car from China, but with European regulation they can't add a tariff according to the country.
So instead they the government will subsidize only electric vehicle that emitted less than X kg of CO2 for its production.
I think planes or to be precise their fuel aren't even taxed normally
We have the largest emission trading scheme in the world in the EU and it is actually working. The issue is that there are no taxes on international flights nor on kerosine. So flying is made artifically cheaper. That alone basicly would solve the problem.
The other big problem is that train tickets are not generally accepted across EU borders. That is a massive problem if one of your trains is delayed and you miss a connection due to that. You end up not being able to take an alternative train for free and do not get paid the normal fine from the train operator for long delays. There is some cooperation, so this is not the case for all international journeys, but still it is a problem.
The big oil companies support that because it would cost a lot of political capital. That means they can delay it as long as possible
That's true, but a carbon tax is politically more difficult to implement