In the short term it has and will, while we have low hanging fruit we can tackle, stuff like insulating houses, not burning fossil fuels, and taxing carbon output so that commercial / industrial processes take it into account has all lead to reductions, but those won’t last forever. I mean, now that Solar / Wind are cheaper than fossil fuels, a carbon tax alone no longer incentivizes reductions in energy use since energy and carbon output have been decoupled.
Once we finished doing those basic things that we should have been doing for decades, per capita energy use will trend back up, and overall energy use has still been trending upwards this whole time anyways due to population growth.
Energy use increasing isn’t an issue if carbon output is decreasing. That’s happening in the EU and the US, and countries like China and India will eventually get there.
a carbon tax alone
Sure, no single change will undo over a century of pollution, but I think you’re discounting the impact too much. I don’t know about the EU, but we haven’t even tried a carbon tax in the US. We have gas taxes and carbon credits, but those are largely ineffective IMO.
If we place a carbon tax on imports, it’ll act like a selective tariff, so imported goods would have an incentive to reduce their carbon footprint. I think it could be quite effective at accelerating change.
Yes, my point is that many green advocates / leftists mistakenly think that per capita energy usage will go down.
My point is that once it’s decoupled from emissions there is no reason for it to, so it will skyrocket, so western governments should be focusing on building out excessive seeming levels of clean electricity generation.
Yup, focusing on energy use misses the forest for the trees. The focus should be on net CO2 output, and as long as that’s trending downward, we’re making progress.
In the short term it has and will, while we have low hanging fruit we can tackle, stuff like insulating houses, not burning fossil fuels, and taxing carbon output so that commercial / industrial processes take it into account has all lead to reductions, but those won’t last forever. I mean, now that Solar / Wind are cheaper than fossil fuels, a carbon tax alone no longer incentivizes reductions in energy use since energy and carbon output have been decoupled.
Once we finished doing those basic things that we should have been doing for decades, per capita energy use will trend back up, and overall energy use has still been trending upwards this whole time anyways due to population growth.
Energy use increasing isn’t an issue if carbon output is decreasing. That’s happening in the EU and the US, and countries like China and India will eventually get there.
Sure, no single change will undo over a century of pollution, but I think you’re discounting the impact too much. I don’t know about the EU, but we haven’t even tried a carbon tax in the US. We have gas taxes and carbon credits, but those are largely ineffective IMO.
If we place a carbon tax on imports, it’ll act like a selective tariff, so imported goods would have an incentive to reduce their carbon footprint. I think it could be quite effective at accelerating change.
Yes, my point is that many green advocates / leftists mistakenly think that per capita energy usage will go down.
My point is that once it’s decoupled from emissions there is no reason for it to, so it will skyrocket, so western governments should be focusing on building out excessive seeming levels of clean electricity generation.
Yup, focusing on energy use misses the forest for the trees. The focus should be on net CO2 output, and as long as that’s trending downward, we’re making progress.