Potholer54: A CONSERVATIVE solution to global warming (Part 1)

[repoman]

great video of course. I am not sure what his actual political views are, but this is a good framing for calling about conservatives for their BS on this topic.

 

[bigfield]

v;dw: The conservative solution is to phase out fossil fuels using a market-based approach, just as they did with leaded petrol and CFCs. However, some conservative politicians (Potholer quotes the US Republican Party) deny the existence of climate change instead of pursuing any solution.

 

[bilby]

It's not a difficult problem; There are technologies that extract CO₂ from air and turn it in to carbonates that can then be land-filled (or used as raw material for such things as plasterboard). For example: https://qz.com/1100221/the-worlds-first-negative-emissions-plant-has-opened-in-iceland-turning-carbon-dioxide-into-stone/

Jan Wurzbacher, Climeworks’s director, says it hopes to bring costs down to about $100 per metric ton of carbon dioxide.

So that's your initial Carbon Tax level - whatever the current cost of doing this actually is. Tax all fossil fuels at that rate; Give rebates to uses such as plastics that don't lead to atmospheric CO₂.

If the technology gets cheaper (as it should when scaled up); Or if other, cheaper CO₂ mineralizing technologies are developed, you can reduce that tax level accordingly.

If it's still cheaper to burn coal, oil or gas after paying that amount of tax, then that's OK - the taxes just get spent on extracting and burying the CO₂. If other technologies (whatever those might turn out to be) are cheaper than fossil fuel plus Carbon Tax, then users of fossil fuels will make the switch.

The only problem is political - governments need to implement this tax worldwide, on all fossil fuel production/extraction; And then ensure that the tax collected is used only for the manufacture and disposal of carbonates from atmospheric CO₂.

Mind you, even if the morons in charge of our major economies were not denying the underlying science, arranging a global tax, and then auditing the expenditure of the revenue to ensure it is all used to extract CO₂ from the atmosphere, would be a massive ask.

It's not a difficult problem to solve. But humans are pretty good at fucking up even simple solutions.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The only problem is political - governments need to implement this tax worldwide, on all fossil fuel production/extraction; And then ensure that the tax collected is used only for the manufacture and disposal of carbonates from atmospheric CO₂.

Actually, there's no requirement to make the tax only used to remove CO2, the market can handle it fine if it's set up right.

What you do is make pollutant taxes refundable. Lets say it's $100/ton for CO2 emission. You mine enough coal to make a ton of CO2, you pay $100. You extract a ton of CO2 from the air and turn it into carbonates, you get paid $100. Pick a target CO2 level and change rate. If the world is above this the CO2 tax goes up next year. If it's below the tax goes down. Have published formulas for this so it's automatic.

Do the same any other pollutants released into the environment in general.