re: #7 Obdicut

Oh, so you only want the ‘pollution’ aspect of it taxed, and not other environmental damages?

Isn’t pollution synonymous with environmental damage? Ok, that’s a little tart. I think that the answer you’re looking for is yes, i should be saying “taxing co2” and not pollution. pollution should have a hard cap, because i don’t want companies simply paying tax in order to dump mercury all over the place. sorry if that was unclear. we’re taxing carbon emissions.

No, you’re not getting it. Corn biodeisel is very economically viable once its emissions are taxed. It doesn’t have a bad emission profile; that’s not why its inefficient. It’s because of the emissions that are necessary to produce it; the emissions for the harvesters, combines, trucks transporting it, etc. etc. Which is actually a quite complicated calculation.

No, you’re not getting it. The harvesters, combines, trucks, etc. are paying taxes on their own emissions, because they’re buying heavily-taxed fuel, unless they’re running on clean energy. It’ll drive the price of corn biodiesel through the roof, unless the supply chain is running on clean energy. Follow?

As is, for example, figuring out whether or not photovoltaic cells made with rare-earth elements— that have to be extracted using energy-intensive methods— are actually a net energy benefit.

No need to figure it out. The energy source is taxed, adding cost to energy-intensive work, which adds cost to the price of the mined elements.

Why do you think these calculations are simple?

Let me make a simple illustration: if you told company X that their fuel prices would rise 50%, they could tell you in very short order what the new price of their products would need to be in order to maintain their current margins.

It eliminates all of the finicky complexity of figuring out supply chain emissions because it’s factored into the price of the fossil fuels, and companies have been modifying sell prices in response to fuel price variation for a looong time. Hell, i’ve done it. (and if i can do it…)

This is fun…i don’t often get to talk supply chain management…