Carbon tax - Solution or political agenda?

We all know that the climate is changing and atleast to some degree human activity is influencing it.
This is already affecting hunting. One example is conifer encroachment in mountain goat habitat in western Montana. Goat populations are suffering. Drought makes for a hard winter for mule deer and antelope.

Recently the calls for an Carbon Tax are getting louder. NatGeo is on the bandwagon.
Is a carbon tax a solution? Carbon taxes are regressive form of taxation, there’s no disputing that. But even then, if it would help that would be okay with many. Is a carbon tax beneficial to slowing a warming climate. Or is it fantasy to believe that raising people’s power bills and making it more expensive to get to work, will help the climate?


Personally, I think it’s unfortunate to see such a serious issue go the way of a political agenda and don’t think making people poorer helps the climate. I don’t believe the average mean temperature of the globe correlates to government revenue or the disposable income of lower earners.

What say you?

1. We're only one Country and we have all of Africa and most of Asia that reaching up trying to obtain an America living standard using any means necessary including cheap and dirt energy.
2. The scale of the problem is very large, even if we stopped all carbon generation tomorrow, there's the a lag in the effects. If our generation "solves" this problem we will be doing it for our grandkids.
3. I don't know if a carbon tax is the answer. I would much prefer to modify how we treat various forms of power generation (hydro power) and increase the regulations on industry (both foreign and domestic) instead of trying to tackle the problem on the consumer level.

Cars need to keep getting more fuel efficient. I should be driving a truck that gets 30 mpg instead of 16.

neffa3 said:

Cars need to keep getting more fuel efficient. I should be driving a truck that gets 30 mpg instead of 16.
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I'm definitely not a gear-head so there might be an obvious answer I'm missing, but stupidity aside I have always wondered why they don't make hybrid pickups... seems like they are the class of vehicles that would benefit the most. Better gas mileage, continuous torque, and if you put the batteries in the bed better weight balance... no more sand bags in the back in the winter. I'm kinda surprised there isn't a diesel hybrid truck, I don't care what your politics are it seems like it would be a great vehicle... maybe that's just me.

I’m no gear head which is probably why I dont know, but i’ve always wondered why smaller vehicles like Toyota Tacomas, Jeep Wranglers etc get such poor mileage. They are on par with or even beaten by 450hp full size pickups in fuel economy.

GM made hybrid 1500s (GMC and Chevy) through 2013. I don't think they ever really got much traction in the market. Ford is supposedly coming out with a hybrid F150 in 2020 I believe.

Is this tax along the lines of the carbon credits ordeal across the pond? Where industries pay credits to landowners for sequestering carbon?

I'm also not a gear head but from what I've read it's difficult to achieve big fuel efficiency gains with hybrid technology on heavy vehicles. The GMC ones a few years ago only go 2 mpg better than the regular gas version. And with the costs of the batteries when they need to be replaced it just didn't appeal to many consumers. I personally don't understand while we don't have small turbo-diesels in our Tacomas as it's the standard across the globe in the Helux. Subaru also have a very popular diesel in Europe that has never been introduced here. I don't know if it's regulations that are limiting what we're seeing or if there's this big misnomer that Americans don't care about fuel efficiency.

I personally think a carbon tax is purely political. No matter what you do, until you control the population growth you are fooling yourself. As nefa3 points out, we are one country. Consider that the population of China and India combined constitute about 1/3 of the world's total population. Statistically, the North America has more undeveloped land than Africa.

Remember back in the 60's and 70's when there was a push for zero population growth? When they talked about the ideal being 2.5 kids per family?

haiku_rodney said:

I personally think a carbon tax is purely political. No matter what you do, until you control the population growth you are fooling yourself. As nefa3 points out, we are one country. Consider that the population of China and India combined constitute about 1/3 of the world's total population. Statistically, the North America has more undeveloped land than Africa.

Remember back in the 60's and 70's when there was a push for zero population growth? When they talked about the ideal being 2.5 kids per family?

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Agree about population growth. I think the idea is that by population the US produces a disproportionate share of CO2 by proportion of the population. But you raise a good point, also given that our standard of living and that of Europe is a direct result of using fossil fuels is it reasonable to tell poorer nations they can't use them. Personally I think clear emissions goals (without the partisan bickering) and incentives for alternative fuels is the best bet. Punishing a company like BP because they produce a fuel we all use seems shortsighted. They have a huge budget and are beholden to investors, I would bet that if the their boards saw better returns by investing in new xyz alternative energy source BP would shift it's focus. But right now green energy companies run on paper thin margins compared to OG companies. There are numerous private equity OG companies realizing 2.5x returns in 3-5 years with 300-500+ million investments, their isn't a green company out there that can touch that.

There is a company called workhorse who is making electric work trucks mainly for large site construction and docks/port work. The plus being you don't need to haul a generator or anything the truck has all the power you need. My buddy is invested and has trying to talk me into it as well. I'm not sure if these truck are on the market yet.

If there were any hybrid trucks the would really only serve much purpose if you mainly used them around town or the city.

As far as carbon tax I don't think it will really do much to prevent additional emissions I think it will just force people to pay more to the govt who in turn will squabble the money. Industry on its own in order to meet the demands of the consumer already work on updating to cleaner and efficient means of production.

To me there is no easy answer and I'm sure there is compromise somewhere in the middle, only thing is it is a collectively global issue.

TrickyTross said:

Is this tax along the lines of the carbon credits ordeal across the pond? Where industries pay credits to landowners for sequestering carbon?

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I've seen a few different versions.

One is CCL.
https://citizensclimatelobby.org/carbon-fee-and-dividend/

Another is Nori.
https://nori.com/

https://workhorse.com/pickup/

For anyone interested. Also looks like it is hybrid not just electric and they're taking pre orders. Supposedly there "affordable" but I have not seen an actual price.

PrairieHunter said:

I've seen a few different versions.

One is CCL.
https://citizensclimatelobby.org/carbon-fee-and-dividend/

Another is Nori.
https://nori.com/

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Got ya. Nori is the model im familiar with.....

While I liked the webpage for the Workhorse truck, their investor presentation leaves a lot lacking. https://workhorse.com/storage/app/media/investors/presentations/2018-Business-Update.pdf

MTGomer said:

I’m no gear head which is probably why I dont know, but i’ve always wondered why smaller vehicles like Toyota Tacomas, Jeep Wranglers etc get such poor mileage. They are on par with or even beaten by 450hp full size pickups in fuel economy.

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Alot of that has to do with the CAFE standards. Toyota sells enough cars and cuvs to overcome the poor mileage from the Tundra and Tacoma. On the flip side, both GM and Ford sell mostly trucks now so they have to do more innovation to reach those CAFE milestones. Aluminum body panels and parts, cylinder deactivation, turbos, diesel, 10 speed transmissions, and even 4cylinder turbo option will be available on the brand new GM twins. At ford, only 20% of F150's are sold with the v8 (5.0 coyote).

As noted before, this is a cross-national issue. Any taxes/costs assessed by US alone just drive production outside of the US, and net global emissions go up because of more inefficient/less clean energy production in the destination countries. Feel-good/political concepts like EthOH and carbon credits are feel good boondoggles perpetrated on voters who have no idea how the global economy actually works.

Carbon taxes, carbon credits, and the like are simply a way for the giant corporations to pass the cost on to us. They get the feel-good press touting their "zero-carbon-footprint" factories, oh, and by the way, expenses have gone up, folks. So sorry about the price increase. The consumer pays for all of it, and the corporation gets to be all smug and sanctimonious about their "green initiative". Why should we bear the full cost of this enormous scam while China is building coal powerplants with 1960's technology as fast as they can slap them together? The socialist agenda says we need to pick up the check for everyone else's pollution, because the only thing they know how to do is punish the successful, and tax everyone back to the Stone Age. Except the ruling class, of course. They get a pass because they are busy crushing the rest of us in the name of internationalism.

If they were really serious about addressing the issue, all the carbon credits and crap would go away, and you and I would be able to get serious cost share on putting small solar panels on our roofs, and small wind generators in our backyards. The solution is not enormous solar farms or wind farms, but distributed microgeneration. If 20% of homes had a solar array that would cut their power consumption by 10%, we'd reduce residential power use by 2%. That doesn't sound like a lot, but it also doesn't take into account the synergistic effects that would follow. Joe Homeowner sees his power bill drop 10%. "Hey, that's cool! I wonder how much more I can drop it?" Now, he's interested in programmable thermostats, more efficient appliances, and behaviors that reduce power consumption, because he has a stake in his power use, and concrete proof that it saves him money. Not everyone will react this way, but a lot of folks will.

Personally, I do what I can within reason to reduce my own power consumption. I have zero interest in forcing my neighbors to do the same. When Vegas puts out the lights, and Times Square goes back to painted billboards, I'll believe corporate America is serious about power conservation. Until then, I may have to pay for both their excesses and their illusory efforts to conserve, but I refuse to be happy about it, and I refuse to believe that it will do any good in the long run. And don't even get me started about water.

I'd rather see low carbon energy become more affordable and out compete oil/gas/coal than punish every citizen with a regressive consumption tax. Make America Nuclear Again.

beginnerhunter said:

Make America Nuclear Again.

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Interestingly enough, Tom Steyer, CA billionaire, is pushing a ballot initiative in Arizona to require a certain % of ‘clean’ energy by a certain date (50 by 30) but it doesn’t consider zero carbon producing nuclear asClean. Although the nations largest energy producer is the zero carbon emitting Palo Verde Nuclear Plant- this initiative would likely shit it down in the conversion to wind and solar, which would then- atleast until wind and solar got built up, rely on companies paying the fine to supplement with coal energy during peak demand. That could be expounded on for pages but it is an entirely different topic.

MTGomer said:

Interestingly enough, Tom Steyer, CA billionaire, is pushing a ballot initiative in Arizona to require a certain % of ‘clean’ energy by a certain date (50 by 30) but it doesn’t consider zero carbon producing nuclear asClean. Although the nations largest energy producer is the zero carbon emitting Palo Verde Nuclear Plant- this initiative would likely shit it down in the conversion to wind and solar, which would then- atleast until wind and solar got built up, rely on companies paying the fine to supplement with coal energy during peak demand. That could be expounded on for pages but it is an entirely different topic.

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Tom Steyer is a complete nut job. I would run away from anything that kook is peddling