re: #146 jantjepietje

It’s also the wrong kind of approach.
I think the right wing is seriously missing out on advocating free market solutions to global warming. What we should acknowledges is that in this case the free market fails because of an future cost to society for certain products right now in the form of global warming that isn’t being paid by anyone. Therefore the government must correct the free market’s negligence to the invisible cost to society by taxing but they must let the innovating and search for solutions to the free market.

That means:
-no subsidies for new technologies
-no rules on how to design cars
-no cap and trade witch is going to be an bureaucratic nightmare.

Just taxes.
This might be a strange slogan for the right but I say taxes taxes taxes!
It doesn’t take any bureaucracy, no complicated rules and gives by far the best results
Currently gasoline is taxed with like 18 cents/gallon just make it a dollar or two and watch how soon the free market creates efficient cars
Instead of making a hugely complex cap and trade system why not just tax emissions? etc. etc.

There are several problems with this approach.

First, taxes are difficult to raise for political reasons. Particularly at a time when so many people are trying to save against an uncertain future, and have had much of their savings and other wealth wiped out.

Second, you’re taxing gasoline. Which will drive consumers to do two things: use less gasoline, and use alternatives. If the alternatives - electric cars, for example - are ultimately powered by another carbon source, like coal or natural gas, you’re simply shifting carbon emissions from one source to another, accomplishing nothing.

Finally, taxes again: governments instantly become addicted to new taxes and can never learn to do without them once they’re in place. Yet the whole point of this tax is to drive down consumption of the taxed resource, which will inevitably cause revenues to dwindle. This will lead to calls for additional taxes, perhaps on other energy sources, perhaps on unrelated items, in order to maintain government’s insatiable appetite for what it has become accustomed to.

Taxation doesn’t drive the free market in this case; it introduces large distortions to it.

If you want to play with taxes, consider another approach - reduce my taxes if I buy a high mileage car, or reduce my gasoline consumption, or lower my natural gas usage. Use taxes as a reward instead of a bludgeon.