Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to green fund manager Erik Kobayashi-Solomon a carbon tax is the free market solution to the climate crisis.
Carbon Tax: The Ultimate Free Market Solution To Climate Change
Erik Kobayashi-Solomon
Jan 25, 2019, 11:52am…
Unlike a lot of mush-minded Greenies, I am under no illusion that a tax on carbon emissions will discourage people from burning carbon-based fuel or will serve just retribution on wasteful capitalists. Nor do I think that the taxing authority will use the collected funds for anything other than a typically idiotic boondoggle. In fact, I do not even believe that a carbon tax will do anything to stop the near-term effects of climate change (there is plenty of heat stored in the ocean, and those chickens will take decades to come home to roost).
No. My reasoning is based completely on free market considerations.
Humans do one thing phenomenally well: adapt to obstacles. If there is a mountain in front of us, we’ll climb it, build a tunnel through it, construct a road around it, and throw up a scenic overlook on the side of it.
The pure expression of human adaptability is the free market system.
…
Let’s say that the federal government enacted a levy of $10 per ton of CO2 emitted — a pittance next to the true, non-externalized cost of carbon.
The fact is that a $10 / ton carbon tax will do nothing or next to nothing to end prices or to the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere. However, it will release the adaptive creativity of engineers and business people trying to find ways to help companies extract as much profit after the tax is imposed as they did before.
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Then, it will be time to raise that tax to $15 / ton so we can watch the same wealth creating process occur once again.
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Some people might find it fascinating to poke an ant’s nest with a big stick, to watch the ants unleash their “adaptive creativity” to repair the damage. But being poked with a big stick is pretty hard on the ants.
Here’s a radical thought Erik – instead of trying to argue the virtues of persuading politicians to coerce the “free market”, instead of celebrating the sacrifice and adaptability people would employ to overcome your artificial carbon tax mountain, how about developing products which people would want to purchase of their own free will?
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“will release the adaptive creativity of engineers and business people”
Has happened already resulting in an ever growing set of studies and financial analysis undermining all aspects of the CO2 related scam. Further.
Occam’s razor says that amongst several hypothesis, the simplest one is the best. That’s why proponents of creative CO2 “free money” schemes face that much resistance.
We don’t need another hidden tax system.
Increasing the cost of FFs would prevent natural gas from stealing nuclear power sales, and
that would save and make even more desirable to build molten salt small modular nuclear reactors, which can produce energy roughly half as expensive as massive, conventional light water reactors,
and cheaper than anything except cheap natural gas. Unfortunately it would also promote really stupid forms of power generation, especially with respect to their effect of the grid, namely wind and soalar. How about a requirement that power generators have to be reliable (power available on demand).
:rollseyes:
kent, molten salt small modular nuclear reactors need to be created first. They’re still vaporware, and look to remain vaporware for the foreseeable future. I wish as much as anyone that someone will figure them out and get them working to scale commercially (assuming they’re half as good as they’re hyped to be), but that hasn’t happened yet and doesn’t look to be happening anytime soon.
“However, it will release the adaptive creativity of engineers and business people trying to find ways to help companies extract as much profit after the tax is imposed as they did before.”
It doesn’t take any creativity to do what businesses have done to keep their profits the same since the beginning of time. Pass the extra expenses on to the consumer. Duuuh!
It’s can’t be a “free” market if half the participants are only there because there is a government automatic riffle pointed at their chest.
There’s never a shortage of ideas to steal people’s money.
The true cost of carbon? As it appears that the rise in CO2 levels is a net positive EKS’s desire for an appropriate tax rate should actually be a subsidy.
To make the statement that the SCC is much higher, he must buy into the idea that combining unreliable UN IPCC climate models with unreliable econometric models over a 300 year period, one may obtain useful, governmental policy-relevant information. Then again, he may just be doing his own rent-seeking, without actually believing that crap.
Exactly Tom, the true cost of carbon isn’t a cost at all but a benefit – the plants love the stuff, which means better crops which means being able to feed more people.
Appears the French couldn’t tell the difference between an ant hill and a hornets nest.
Apparently trying to establish his own credentials as not a “…mush-minded Greenie…”…? Well, he failed. Trying to claim you’re not a Greenie when you clearly are one doesn’t make you non-Greenie, anymore than trying to say a government imposed “tax” is free-market makes it free-market. Multiple fails (or should we just be blunt and call them outright lies?) in the very first sentence. *sigh* SMH
I don’t believe he was trying to prove he wasn’t a greenie, it’s just that he isn’t one of those “mush-minded greenies”.
Regardless, he failed at that as well.
Indeed, just the claim that a carbon tax is a “free-market” concept shows that he very much is one of those “mush-minded” greenies.
All of the carbon pricing schemes are intended to phase out burning of fossil fuels and replace them with renewable energy platforms. Truly the scale of this notion is monumental since modern nations (think G20) rely on oil, coal and gas for 90%+ of their energy needs. Not only that, the supposed renewable energy tech is immature and dysfunctional to power supply. Moreover, despite massive subsidies, it is an economic sinkhole. The latest demonstration of green energy facts on the ground is provided by Falmouuth Mass.
Boston Globe has the story of Falmouth’s Green Energy Blues: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/01/23/green-energy-blues-town-that-sought-something-about-climate-change/XiNySqj81IimsF7jJ36IFI/story.html
My Synopsis is https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2019/01/27/green-energy-blues-falmouth-city-cautionary-tale/
Where is my Yellow Jacket?
Support France and the movement…Yellow vests for all
#yellowvestyes
Hopefully, I am not repeating another’s comment, but these nonsensical carbon taxes are not only based on the crazy belief that CO2 is an existential boogeyman, but also on what is known as The Glaziers Fallacy, or the Parable of the Broken Window from Frédéric Bastiat in his 1850 essay “Ce qu’on voit et ce qu’on ne voit pas”: The economic stress of artificial taxation (for political ends) creates the same misallocation problems as accidental or intensional destruction. In this case, the economic gain of the glazier to repair a broken window is not a net gain to the economy. In fact, fully accounted, a net loss is more likely. Similarly, taxation imposed to “create” economic activity generally results in an overall reduction.
But hey…..why worry about facts?
A non-solution to a non-problem.
Once again, leftists decide that the way to create wealth is to hobble the people with taxes.
The author apparently believes that those scientists and engineers aren’t already fully engaged in trying to find ways to do more with less.
Doing more with less means greater profits, and what company is not constantly looking for ways to improve profits.
What the author wants is for engineers to be pulled from other wealth generating activities so that they can spend their days finding ways to minimize the pain of the taxes he wants to impose.
Such activity will always result in less wealth in the long run.
“Such activity will always result in less wealth in the long run.”
Only for those who aren’t able to use government power to steal that wealth for themselves.
The free market solution to a tax is to fire your work force, raid the pension fund and relocate your business to a more business friendly environment.
Exactly what happened over the past 20 years as business has relocated from the US to China.
China has no carbon tax. Add a US carbon tax and in 10 years you end up with only Amazon and the USPS doing business in the US.
Now where did I lay my yellow vest?
No it won’t, honey.
Per the laws of thermodynamics, if the ocean heats up by 0.1 degrees, then that heat can’t come out and heat the atmosphere by more than 0.1 degrees. In fact, it must heat it by less.
There’s already a free market carbon tax: the UN Certified Emissions Reduction certificates.
Current price is 24 cents per tonne of CO2.
No not 24 dollars, 24 cents.
In this the free market is reflecting the real price of CO2 emissions: zero, plus transaction costs.
Wow! I’ll take 100 tonnes please.
What a maroon.
I am under no illusion that a tax on carbon emissions will discourage people from burning carbon-based fuel or will serve just retribution on wasteful capitalists…… My reasoning is based completely on free market considerations.
If you are advocating for a “tax” you are not advocating for anything that could be labeled a free market solution. In fact you clearly don’t understand what a free market is.
Here’s a hint for you
“Free-market carbon tax.” That’s term is a work of art to a wordsmith. I am inspired to come up with my own:
Cost-saving expenses
Free-market communism
Democratic socialism (Oops, that one’s already been invented.)
Guilt-free calories
Fat-burning food
Beneficial financial drain
smell-free odors
military intelligence (Oops, that one’s already been invented.)
intelligent dummies