Andres125sx wrote: ↑08 Aug 2022, 12:26
Seriously guys? You continue using money as the only reference? Anyone with a big enough account can do whatever he/she wants?
Then...
How do we value or pay an atmosphere full of GHG?
How do we value or pay an increase of 2ºC of seas?
How do we value or pay destroying forests?
How do we value or pay a hole in the ozone layer?
I´m a capitalist, but not an extremist who consider everything has a price, including lives and the planet like you are suggesting
. There are things wich don´t have a price and it does not matter how many zeros are put in the paycheck, no fortune can replace ozone, the atmosphere or a balanced climate or environment.
Using money to express things at least makes it tangible - and people need something tangible to, hopefully, be more aware of the reality of it all. It's not easy to put a price on CO2 etc., but you can. Credible studies using the best available climate models put it somewhere around $450 per ton of CO2, but the spread is quite large (depending on which economic phenomena are included - but mostly, the price depends on human behavior). And, more worryingly, the climate models are linear - they do not include thresholds/points of no return, which do exist in reality. As such, they are likely to give an under-estimation of the real costs of emissions; and it's a sole factor anyhow. Yet, despite these shortcomings, every study essentially shows the same: on the long term, investing in avoiding climate change now is cheaper than repairing climate damages later. The first scenario typically leads to a ~5% global GDP drop, the latter to ca. 20% drop (with ~100% drop in some African countries). Even if putting a price on clean air seems wrong, these numbers strengthen the case for stringent action.
Now, if we would actually have to pay for that $450-or-so per ton CO2
individually (such that who emits much, pays much), rather than collectively (as we do now - penalizing those who live clean, subsidizing those who pollute), things may actually change. The price of polluting choices goes up, making less polluting ones more attractive. If we would actually re-invest the pollution levy into developing clean tech, constructing clean energy plants, etcetera, we may actually have a shot at changing something. Yes, that does mean that the ones that can afford it can keep polluting and just buy it off. But is that really an issue? If the investments lead to a drawdown in pollution elsewhere, that's fine with me. And there is still the financial incentive for them to choose cheaper options.
There are of course a lot of nuances. A proper pollution price
is hard to estimate, and the emissions of certain products will be an estimate too - but a reasonable estimate is fairer than paying nothing. It can't be introduced cold turkey - there should be a buildup towards it, increasing year-by-year, which should be clear trajectory that can be anticipated by all stakeholders, public and private. It should be universal, no exceptions as is the case for current CO2 credit systems. And it should be used to cover actual environmental damages - either repair of existing, or prevention of new. It will also suffer from the prevention paradox - the more successful, the lower the pollution price will become (the added cost of a ton of CO2 is higher in a world with rampant climate change than with limited) - and the more people will complain the price was too high (as they do for acid rain, and for the ozone layer).
Oh, and of course, there is the biggest challenge: preventing damages requires to pay for something now, while the benefits manifest later (in the form of
something not happening). While in the current system, we pay very little and the damages, then unavoidable, manifest substantially later. Which is society does not currently pay $450 per ton CO2 emitted - we will pay that in 30 or 50 years, or mostly our kids will. And humans are concerned with whether they can pay for their icecream today. Not whether they can still pay for basic nutrition in 50 years.
Anyway, utopic as it is, a pollution price is the fairest way in which environmental problems can be tackled while maintaining a liberal system - personal freedom, but not absolved from responsibility as is now the case. A pollution price will likely mean that those currently financially challenged will be more so; that will have to be countered by changes in the taxation system, but that is a political issue not to be discussed here (anyway, we should not use the notion that, in the current system, a pollution price will disproportionally affect the poor as a reason to block a pollution price; if a fair solution does not fit in a flawed system, fix the flawed system, don't block the fair solution).
Of course, there's the alternative approach: more qualitative warnings and banning polluting technology. It's a fair alternative, although I do not subscribe to it (I have no issue with banning the most polluting tech al together, but it can easily go too far and also lead to banning feasible alternative clean tech), but it is also the approach that has been tried for many years now and lead to nothing. If people already have a hard time being convinced by future quantitative damages - qualitative damages are even harder to imagine. And that is why I am in favor of putting a price on things, ideally as solution, but even if just for illustration.