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Panel urges quick adoption of carbon pricing to hit emissions goal

12 Comments
By Leika Kihara

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© Thomson Reuters 2021.

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Japan already has "carbon pricing" if you include the taxes on fuel and the tax on car's engines. Both of these taxes are designed to discourage fossil fuel consumption.

Japan will reduce CO2 emissions organically with a falling population so there is little to gain from taxing folks more than they already pay on fossil fuels.

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Paying money to the govt fixes the environment ?

If you believe this then you arn't paying enough taxes.

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You can't fight climate change, which is caused by capitalism, with more capitalism.

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If there is a urgency to climate change, then policy needs to be implemented now rather than later.

If a significant consolidated change is needed, then it is logical that a policy that effects everyone is required.

If we all unevenly contribute to carbon emissions, then our individual reduction is likely going to be uneven.

With that said, I have yet to see any study on the impacts of the reduction in carbon emission from the airline industry as a result of the pandemic. That should be material to support the amount of effort or way ahead in someway.

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You can't fight climate change, which is caused by capitalism, with more capitalism.

Most pollution is caused by a lack of clear property rights. If you have clear title to something, you can control who enters and what they do there. But who owns the air we breathe and the major bodies of water? They are jointly owned by all of us, therefore it falls to some level of government to make the rules about who does what in the air and water.

Pollution generally represents a cost of production or some other activity that is not incorporated into the total cost of production or what ever the polluting activity is. Pollution is a real cost but since that cost is not incorporated into the total cost of the polluting activity, that activity appears cheaper to the participants than it is so more of it is produced or more of the activity occurs than would otherwise be the case if the cost of production were incorporated into the cost of production. Others, those who suffer the negative effects of pollution bear that cost. The idea with carbon taxes and pollution credit markets is to find ways to incorporate the cost of pollution into the cost of the polluting product or activity. As the cost rises less will be bought and there will be less pollution. The broad consensus among economists is that this will be more effective than top down requirements for specific industries to adopt specific pollution control technologies as was the case into the 1980s with their arcane debates over the merits of Best Available Technology. abbreviated BAT, vs Best Practicable Technology or BPT. Let the industries involved figure out what works best to achieve the required reduction in pollution.

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Sigh. I should have written:

that activity appears cheaper to the participants than it is so more of it is produced or more of the activity occurs than would otherwise be the case if the cost of pollution were incorporated into the cost of production.

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You can't fight climate change, which is caused by capitalism, with more capitalism.

This is why unrestricted capitalism is bad. It runs rampant without concern on its effects to society. It's why social democracies end up with less income disparity, and higher happiness indexes, that countries with unbridled capitalism like the USA and China. It's the balance between the motivation of capitalism, and the responsibility to the society in which that capitalism operates.

Climate change is a result of the absence of responsibility to the society in which it operates, biasing heavily to the financial motivations of capitalism. It's unhealthy, and our world is paying for it.

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It's why social democracies end up with less income disparity,

That is emphatically not true. We see income disparities increasing all across the world and across all forms of government. The growing income disparity is mostly due to a lack of effective competition. Too many big markets are dominated by oligopolies who's market power allow them to extract a degree of monopoly rents that would not be possible if there were more competitors with roughly equal market share in the market. FedEx vs UPS, Coke vs Pepsi (noting that Pepsico also owns Frito Lay and dominates not just soft drinks but snack foods too). Colgate Palmolive vs Unilever vs Proctor and Gamble. These are huge market dominating oligopolies. Miller-Corrs vs Anheiser Busch. Each of these big corporations owns dozens of different beer brands. All those microbrews you think are independent? Most are owned by one of the two giants. There are lots more. Almost every isle of the grocery store is dominated by a couple of big oligopolies. The difference in price between what the monopolist or the oligopolist can charge and what firms could charge in a fully competitive market where there are so many sellers that prices and profits are driven down to their bare minimum represents a wealth transfer from consumers to producers. It is probably the single greatest wealth transfer happing in the worlds economies. It is why US corporations are sitting on something like $1.8 trillion in unspent cash balances. If these firms faced vigorous competitors they would have to lower their prices and spend that money on productive capital and paying higher wages to compete for workers. Nations need to be more aggressive in applying anti-trust laws to break up monopolies and the many oligopolies into many smaller firms and enforce competition among them. Europe does a better job of enforcing competition than the US but the problem is global in scope and affects all nations.

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It's why social democracies end up with less income disparity,

That is emphatically not true.

Or, get this, it's objectively true. The numbers below are the Gini index, a quantified representation of a nation's Lorenz curve. A Gini index of 0% expresses perfect equality, while index of 100% expresses maximal inequality.

United States: 47.0%

China: 46.5%

Sweden: 24.9%

Norway: 26.8%

Canada: 32.1%

Australia: 30.3%

United Kingdom: 32.4%

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality

It's fact that social democracies end up with less income disparity. America and China are unbridled capitalism leading to more income disparity, and lower happiness indexes.

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You can't fight climate change, which is caused by capitalism, with more capitalism.

The alternatives haven’t been much better. The centrally planned economies of the USSR and the Eastern bloc were notorious polluters. The West Germans were horrified at the filthy state East Germany was in after reunification.

The system is part of the problem and the government needs to intervene.

However, the bottom line is we have too many people.

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Or, get this, it's objectively true. The numbers below are the Gini index, a quantified representation of a nation's Lorenz curve. A Gini index of 0% expresses perfect equality, while index of 100% expresses maximal inequality.

Which GINI index are you using? If you look at the wealth GINI, which measures the distribution of total wealth, not just stated incomes, the results are very different. The income GINI does not measure wealth accumulated over time so it misses stock options sold years later at a profit, real estate holdings, equities and the like. The Wealth GINI captures that. Some of your social democracies like Sweden and UK have more skewed wealth distributions than the US.

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Which GINI index are you using?

I gave the link in my post, you're welcome to go and look at it there. There are multiple indexes of income disparity indexes on that page. I picked one. All of them show the US having WAY higher income disparity than any social democracies. At least 50% higher. And for every index, the wealth inequality of the US and China are nearly the same.

Numbers don't lie. I provided multiple indexes that show my comment, you called false, to be objectively true:

social democracies end up with less income disparity, and higher happiness indexes, that countries with unbridled capitalism like the USA and China.

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