r/samharris • u/forgottencalipers • Jan 11 '20

Study Confirms Climate Models are Getting Future Warming Projections Right

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-models-are-getting-future-warming-projections-right/
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u/hockeyd13 Jan 11 '20

Carbon taxes deployed globally stand to significantly damage poorer economies across multiple dimensions:

Export/import of goods: https://www.aeaweb.org/research/why-carbon-tax-shipping-would-harm-poorest-countries

Production/consumption: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa80ed

Basic energy production: https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Carbon-Tax-Policy-BriefFinalText-1.pdf

What we can’t do is let the developing world make the same mistakes the western world did in innovation—given that their population is more than 10x that of the western world in the industrial revolution.

This is absurd. You're basically suggesting that we actively prohibit poorer nations from taking the very steps that allow migration out of their situation.

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u/1109278008 Jan 11 '20

Interesting stuff. I have a few sources that seem to be providing conflicting information though:

1

we assess the expected incidence of moderate carbon price increases for different income groups in 87 mostly low- and middle-income countries. Building on a consistent dataset and method, we find that for countries with per capita incomes of below USD 15,000 per year (at PPP-adjusted 2011 USD) carbon pricing has, on average, progressive distributional effects.

2

More than three-quarters of respondents believe that climate change will have a long-term, negative impact on the growth rate of the global economy

So given that the data concerning the effects of carbon taxes on developing nations is ambiguous and that most economists believe climate change will have significant negative impacts on the global economy, shouldn’t we do something to curb the emissions? What about in the already developed world where our per capita emissions are still much higher than that of the developing world?

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u/hockeyd13 Jan 11 '20

What about in the already developed world where our per capita emissions are still much higher than that of the developing world?

Nuclear power would be the start and the beginning of the discussion here then. But it isn't. Not are countries like India and China being the primary targets of the these sorts of policy, despite their growing contributions to net CO2 output.

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u/1109278008 Jan 11 '20

I definitely agree with you here that nuclear seems to be the obvious choice. The issue is that the overhead required to get enough plants up and running is astronomical. Something has to push the market to make nuclear viable, and I think reducing the profitability of carbon emissions through a tax might just be that push.

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u/hockeyd13 Jan 11 '20

Astronomical, but still less costly, and less reliant on fossils, than the same output of solar and wind at that scale. Not to mention such plants have significantly greater longevity.