this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
475 points (98.6% liked)
United States | News & Politics
7215 readers
363 users here now
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Carbon tax. We needed it 20 years ago but even more now. Ironically a Republican idea that has been ignored for years.
Right. There's no reason why private jets shouldn't be paying to offset 100% of their emissions. For cars it's a different story because it's a tax on the poor for something they need. Private jets are purely luxuries, only used by the wealthy, and have a viable alternative.
Maybe a dumb question, but how does providing money actually offset emissions? Are there emission vacuums somewhere that require payment to operate?
Well, trees are one of them. More money means more trees planted.
Or that money could be invested in renewable energy, which will reduce emissions in other areas.
And when you increase the cost of something, you get less of it, so taxing emissions should mean fewer emissions.
And so on.
not real ones, most of them are scams where countries accept money in order to not deforest areas they werent going to anyway, double dip, or just deforest regardless
Nope, fuck cars. Tax carbon, give free public bus passes. Easy.
The closest bus to me is about a 1.5 hour walk, with the path options either being, the side of a 70 mph highway, or the side of 45 mph side roads (no sidewalks).
The bus pass would just take up space in my wallet and nothing more.
I work from home to reduce my car usage dramatically, and already pay annual taxes on the car itself as well as every gallon of gas (in top of standard sales tax) that goes into it. The car is 15 years old and gets over 30mpg.
Your 'easy' solution requires uprooting people's lives dramatically and is, dare I say it, an incredibly naive take on the real problems that the planet, nations, and individual people actually have.
And before you say 'move somewhere with people' I do live where people are, I live in between two of the biggest cities in my state, moving closer to those cities requires a) a huge sum of liquid cash, and b) a huge increase in my cost of living.
Think critically about the world you are in, have perspective about other people's living situations, and have respect for your peers. Blanket solutions are historically ineffective.
They're totally forgetting that people need to live where other people don't. Farming. Solar fields. Forestry. Mining. Wind farms.
Thbk realistically about the world you're in. Ban cars and buses will be everywhere.
This isn't a problem in poor countries.
In what poor country are cars banned?
Funny how you respond to just this comment but not the others.
What bus is going to run to bring farmers to massive farms, miles apart?
The busses that run between cities, like in most countries
And what about the places that aren't between cities? Rural areas are larger than you think. You're expecting people to walk 4 miles and wait 2 hours for a bus on a regular basis.
You can't walk 4 miles? Grow up.
I expect people to cycle 10 miles on a regular basis. these aren't real problems that you're describing. You're just justifying the harm you're causing the environment because you're too lazy to make very minor efforts that most of the world does already.
Snow. Good luck.
Not everyone lives in cities, @fuckcars@lemmy.world
I'm 100% in favor.
My preferred solution is to tax carbon, and redistribute it as a tax credit/stimulus evenly to the population. I like that better than treating it as normal income so it stays focused on being a Piguovian Tax and not repurposed as a general revenue source.
But honestly, I'm in favor of pretty much any carbon tax initiative.