Read it and weep future billionaires of america

[kentonio]

This sounds completely unrelated to the problem of "vehicles create pollution," so it seems that you'd want to do... whatever it is that you're proposing, regardless of whether there's a tax on pollution or not.

So, what is the "problem" that you're trying to solve here? Obviously it doesn't have anything to do with pollution, or else you'd tax all pollution equally.

It's approaching the problem of pollution from a different angle. If you tax on ownership then you can weigh vehicle ownership more towards essential commercial use and away from personal non-essential use.

It's that, apparently, people aren't driving to the right places. Are they driving to their friends' houses too often? Are they visiting restaurants that are too far away from home? Are they choosing workplaces that are too far from their children's schools? Are they hiring plumbers whose workplaces are too far away from the homes they work at?

If so, how do you know this? And if so, is this "problem" so crippling that we simply must start a Bureau Of Deciding Which People Are Driving Too Frequently so that we can fix it? Should we hire a bunch of high-wage, highly-educated people to study the problem, and pay them lots of money, and give them a nice office in downtown DC near Mount Vernon Square?

You seem to be trying to steer this towards a rather tired 'left wing folks want to control peoples lives!' canard, and if so I'll leave it here. I have no idea why the idea of trying to move away from non-essential petrol use without hindering essential usage is so alien to you. It's not exactly a controversial idea. You also don't seem to have provided any kind of support for why you are in favour of increasing essential transport costs, nor indeed how you would deal with the inevitable consumer goods price rises this would cause.

[Dauphin]

It's approaching the problem of pollution from a different angle. If you tax on ownership then you can weigh vehicle ownership more towards essential commercial use and away from personal non-essential use.

Creating a distinction between the two will mean you have to police the distinction. You'll probably end up with white van man getting a tax break for his off duty driving. Perhaps people will buy transit vans as cheaper alternatives to the Prius. Awesome plan.

[Dauphin]

Of course, dyed diesel exists to make a distinction between excise free and regular diesel. So it can be done.

[Dauphin]

And also, I'm not clear why commercial = essential and non-commercial = non-essential. Seems an odd stancei. Suppose the commercial activity is the haulage of caviar or yachts.

[kentonio]

Creating a distinction between the two will mean you have to police the distinction. You'll probably end up with white van man getting a tax break for his off duty driving. Perhaps people will buy transit vans as cheaper alternatives to the Prius. Awesome plan.

Except that commercial use would be based on registered businesses not on you owning a van.

Of course, dyed diesel exists to make a distinction between excise free and regular diesel. So it can be done.

Which then opens up a black marked in dyed fuel which happens here with red diesel. You then need the police doing fuel checks which is incredibly inefficient, expensive and time consuming.

And also, I'm not clear why commercial = essential and non-commercial = non-essential. Seems an odd stancei. Suppose the commercial activity is the haulage of caviar or yachts.

Commercial haulage could well be high value products, its still more important to the economy than non-commercial transport.

End of the day in an ideal world you would just ban oil based fuels and be done with it, but as doing that would shut down the economies of basically every country in the world, we're looking for environmental solutions that won't accidentally lead to things like food becoming so expensive that half the country starves etc. Think about what you're actually proposing for goodness sake, you either tax fuel so highly that it drives people off the road (in which case the price of everything explodes upwards) or you don't and the whole thing is completely pointless from an environmental standpoint (supposedly why you're doing it).

[giblets]

Why is hauling goods with trucks more important than hauling people with cars? I honestly don't understand the logic behind that.

[kentonio]

Why is hauling goods with trucks more important than hauling people with cars? I honestly don't understand the logic behind that.

In a way it's not, but there are more alternatives to moving people around such as mass transit systems that don't tend to work very well for the distribution of goods. Neither is ideal of course, but if you believe that the alternative is the global sea level rising by 6 metres then it's worth looking at.

[Aeson]

So, what is the "problem" that you're trying to solve here? Obviously it doesn't have anything to do with pollution, or else you'd tax all pollution equally.

Not all pollution is equal. The carbon emissions from burning methane created from digestion of sewage or agricultural wastes is superior to the carbon emissions from burning methane pumped out of the ground. You're essentially getting power out of a process (and/or it's similar sibling) that would have happened either way. IIRC, the carbon from burning methane pumped out of the ground is less harmful than burning most of the other forms of sequestered carbon. The carbon emissions from burning diesel with biofuel additives (say, from Jatropa) are less damaging than those of straight diesel.

(I'm not sure exactly of the environmental impacts of diesel vs petrol, diesel + biofuel vs petrol. Some biofuels, like ethanol from corn, shouldn't be used.)

This has a bit of an impact on the commercial vs personal transport issue in the right situations. Commercial vehicles are (AFAIK) better suited to converting to burning methane than personal vehicles given their relative sizes. I know there's some bus lines that already have switched over. Commercial vehicles are more likely to use diesel than personal transport as well, so taxing of different fuels based on their percentage of sequestered vs non-sequestered sources could be a way to get the value that kentonio is talking about (at least in the near term) without needing to specifically target the distinction between commercial and personal usage. And give incentive towards using non-sequestered carbon in general.

[Straybow]

All of which is meaningless if anthropogenic carbon dioxide is not a significant factor in the global warming that started over 150 years ago, when carbon emissions were comparatively miniscule.

[kentonio]

Good thing it is a significant factor then, unless you believe that 95% of the worlds climate scientists are engaged in an evil plot to boost their research funding.

[Aeson]

All of which is meaningless if anthropogenic carbon dioxide is not a significant factor in the global warming that started over 150 years ago, when carbon emissions were comparatively miniscule.

Even if it were so, it wouldn't be completely meaningless. Carbon emissions are only one problem with combustion. There are heath risks from various particulates from various fuels and types of combustion. Methane is cleaner than petrol or diesel and would be good to move towards for that reason only. Methane is also cleaner than burning organic matter, which happens all around the world still. Creating more demand for it may help to incentive the digestion of organic matter rather than burning it. That would result in better soil health in addition to cleaner air.

Another meaningful effect would be that by moving towards biofuel we would extend our fuel reserves.

[giblets]

All of which is meaningless if anthropogenic carbon dioxide is not a significant factor in the global warming that started over 150 years ago, when carbon emissions were comparatively miniscule.

Congratulations on being a dumbass.

[Jaguar]

It's approaching the problem of pollution from a different angle. If you tax on ownership then you can weigh vehicle ownership more towards essential commercial use and away from personal non-essential use.

No, there's only one problem of pollution, and that is the quantity of pollution produced. Taxing people for the pollution created, and then using it to fund offsetting environmental activities like tree-planting, is the solution. It asks people to precisely bear the costs of their pollution.

What you're doing suggests you're trying to solve some other problem - that people don't choose the right things.

You seem to be trying to steer this towards a rather tired 'left wing folks want to control peoples lives!' canard

You're misusing the word "canard" here. It refers to repeated claims that are false. You do want to control people's lives, which is obvious by your interest in figuring out whose transportation is more essential than other peoples'. I just want people to everyone to pay the same rate for the pollution they cause.

You also don't seem to have provided any kind of support for why you are in favour of increasing essential transport costs, nor indeed how you would deal with the inevitable consumer goods price rises this would cause.

I wouldn't. People should pay more for goods that cause pollution.

[kentonio]

No, there's only one problem of pollution, and that is the quantity of pollution produced. Taxing people for the pollution created, and then using it to fund offsetting environmental activities like tree-planting, is the solution. It asks people to precisely bear the costs of their pollution.

Ok if you're incapable of grasping the incredibly simple point that destroying a countries transport infrastructure (and in the process sending the cost of all goods including food through the roof) is not a practical or desirable outcome, then I really don't have any clearer way to put this.

What you're doing suggests you're trying to solve some other problem - that people don't choose the right things.

That's exactly what I'm not saying.

You're misusing the word "canard" here. It refers to repeated claims that are false. You do want to control people's lives, which is obvious by your interest in figuring out whose transportation is more essential than other peoples'. I just want people to everyone to pay the same rate for the pollution they cause.

It was a perfectly suitable word for a ridiculous claim. I want to lower pollution without starving half the country. You (rather oddly for a right wing person) don't seem to attach any importance to things like utterly destroying a countries economy.

I wouldn't. People should pay more for goods that cause pollution.

You do understand what would happen if the price of food suddenly doubled right? Have you taken a semester off your economics degree to go smoke crack or something?

[Jaguar]

This would all be very interesting if carbon taxes would "destroy the transport infrastructure", "starve half the country," or "double the price of food."

They wouldn't. An 18-wheeler carries 80,000 lbs and gets 6 miles per gallon. It can transport food from Omaha to New York City (1200 miles) for only a couple hundred gallons of gasoline. Europeans (through taxes) charge maybe $3 or $4 per gallon more than Americans do. That would be a good starting point, or maybe a bit more. It would cost an 18-wheeler about a thousand dollars per load, or about one or two cents per pound.

The detail you've left out of your analysis is that the transportation networks you think are "essential" are also really gas-efficient, and the "non-essential" commuters are quite gas-inefficient. Carbon taxes would in fact do largely what you wanted to do, without all of the rigmarole.