Senate Democrats To Introduce Legislation That Would Tax Energy Companies Responsible For Major Greenhouse Gas Emissions (thehill.com) 207
Zack Budryk writes via The Hill: The Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act, sponsored by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), would require between 25 to 30 of the U.S. corporations responsible for the most greenhouse gas pollution to pay $300 billion into a fund over 10 years. The legislation would require companies to pay into the fund if they were responsible for at least .05 percent of global carbon dioxide and methane emissions between 2000 and 2019 based on data from the Treasury Department and Environmental Protection Agency. In a document shared with The Hill, Van Hollen's office estimated major companies such as Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron would be taxed $5 billion to $6 billion annually under the bill. The Democratic senator pointed to other policies that could accompany the measure, such as carbon pricing and a clean-energy standard.
The exact uses of the money in the fund have not yet been determined, Van Hollen said, adding there would be a public comment period. Possible uses include building more climate-resilient infrastructure, particularly in disadvantaged communities and communities of color. [...] After years of opposition, major institutions and trade groups like the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have come out in favor of a tax on carbon emissions in recent months. However, Van Hollen's proposal would go further than that, specifically targeting major players like Exxon Mobil and Chevron. Further reading: Democrats Seek $500 Billion in Climate Damages From Big Polluting Companies (The New York Times)
The exact uses of the money in the fund have not yet been determined, Van Hollen said, adding there would be a public comment period. Possible uses include building more climate-resilient infrastructure, particularly in disadvantaged communities and communities of color. [...] After years of opposition, major institutions and trade groups like the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have come out in favor of a tax on carbon emissions in recent months. However, Van Hollen's proposal would go further than that, specifically targeting major players like Exxon Mobil and Chevron. Further reading: Democrats Seek $500 Billion in Climate Damages From Big Polluting Companies (The New York Times)
Say it with me now, "Slush fund" (Score:3, Insightful)
...The exact uses of the money in the fund have not yet been determined...
Oh, I bet they're going to leap, LEAP SIR, to define the exact uses of said fund. It absolutely will not be abused by the political class ( via book deals or speaking engagements or whathaveyou ).
I don't think it matters (Score:5, Interesting)
For a more concrete example I knew a trucker with major heart problems. They cracked his chest open and couldn't find anything wrong. Turned out his lungs were a mess from years of idling in traffic. He was lucky, and made a full recovery, but it adds up.
Everybody talks about pollution in these abstract or long term ways, but it's hurting us right now, we're just not noticing it because we're so used to it.
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Everybody talks about pollution in these abstract or long term ways, but it's hurting us right now, we're just not noticing it because we're so used to it.
We also on average (Western civilization) have the longest life expectancies the human species has ever attained . Easy to not notice when we have no better frame of reference, at all, ever.
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Ah, look, our favorite sockpuppeteer is back.
It's amazing how your commenting is so bad that you can't use the same account for more than 48 hours.
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The frequency with which you switch IDs suggest that your challenges are failing, badly.
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Dude, you're trolling Slashdot at 11 at night. You're in no position to be throwing shade at anyone.
Why do you even bother getting out of bed (Score:2)
I don't care how good their lawyers are they're no match for the US government provided we don't collect pro corporate psychopaths. Microsoft for example is on its way to being broken up for antitrust violations when we elected George Bush Jr who immediately dropped the investigation settled. All it takes to reign in the corporations is just slightly change
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You seem to be conflating the words Capitalists and Consumers
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This is why I say we need publicly funded elections and outlaw any kind of lobbying or private donation.
We're at a stage now where political advertising can consist nearly entirely of astroturfing on social media. Untraceable and unable to be regulated. Deeper pockets that can disguise this well will win out.
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What did I say that was wrong? Spell it out for me.
Don't fall into the trap that just because someone says something you don't like it means they're a shill. It could simply be because you're wrong.
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Right because who would want to fund research into reversing climate change? I'm sure projecting your own ideas onto this group is totally accurate. /s
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Is that what you think would happen?
Bless your socks, your innocence is refreshing.
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What is there to research?
How to more efficiently capture CO2 from the atmosphere.
Ex post facto? (Score:5, Insightful)
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"You owe us $5 billion tax for something you did 20 years before we passed the tax in question"
They cannot make it criminal and deprave someone of their liberty post facto, but they can absolutely seek reparations for damages from a legal entity. Companies do not have the same rights as citizens, so you are correct that they cannot pin it to any single citizen, but companies are a whole different beast and if these companies knew damage was being done in the past (which that's already been demonstrated), it would be very easy to show to a court that the company knew of the material harm they were do
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Jesus christ. Can you imagine what the government of the 80's would have done if the oil companies had said "Gee, we're going to cut back the spigots, we're really endangering the planet!". They wood have berried their dicks so far in the oil company's asses that whoever pulled them out would have been crowned the King of England.
Fuck, some of the dumb shit I read these days. We are all complicit. We needed the energy to grow the country, ensure our defense, and build the lifestyle WE ALL fucking enjoy righ
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It would be just as trivial to prove that you know how destructive your logic is of civil society, and less work would be required because your can't afford as many lawyers as big companies.
These companies operate under state and federal regulation of their businesses. Coming along later and saying "well, those government regulations ACKSHUALLY authorized reparable damages" is exactly the kind of reason that ex post facto laws are disfavored. Even under Calder v. Bull, it's not clear that retrospective ta
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The courts uphold the law. Laws can be changed. And then those new laws are upheld. As for retroactive changes, just look at copyright extensions, it works for those. It can work for tax.
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Sounds like they are only using previous emissions to decide which companies get to pay the tax, but the tax is paid yearly going forward.
Is it legal to tax specific companies based on some arbitrary criteria?
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Every time you change property tax rates, that would mean it's an ex post facto tax on a purchase that already happened. At least by that logic. Or taxes on commodity items that you already own a lot of. There are always going to be retroactive effects to any law - partly due to speculation and gambling on the part of investors on whether or not such laws will happen. But they are not the same as making a past action illegal.
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If the property tax law or budget process laws actually changed, the changes would only apply to future tax years, not past tax years.
Exactly - just like these taxes on energy companies. The rates are set based on actions in previous years, but the tax liability is for future tax years.
And property was already owned before property tax laws were created (and before changes). Anyone who owned anything before property tax laws is getting an "ex post facto" cost. You could argue that it's too late to simply not buy the property and avoid liability. But nobody has ever treated it as an illegal ex post facto law (successfully).
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>Anyone who owned anything before property tax laws is getting an "ex post facto" cost.
You need to stop using words meaning of which you do not understand. This is not what "ex post facto" means in law. This is the opposite of what it means in law.
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And it's not what it means for these energy companies either.
Might not get very far (Score:5, Insightful)
The United States Constitution prohibits "ex post facto" laws. These retroactively make things illegal.
This is not exactly that. But it punishes firms for past behavior with a punishment that was not known at the time. The legislature will have to be very careful writing this [cornell.edu] to avoid having the law thrown out.
A constitutional lawyer would have a better idea of what is allowed.
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Wait, you mean nobody knew about the fucking greenhouse effect say 40 years ago? You fucking liar. All of you guys are sophists and liars.
Nobody said that, you just made it up. What was said was that they did know about the fucking greenhouse effect, and lied about it. And that's a fact, jack.
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Climate change could be very expensive. Expensive things move the economy. It will make rich people very much richer for more catastrophe to take place. Especially if it is relatively subtle and ongoing. Economic output, greatly driven by population growth, is not a useful metric for whether day to day life improves for anyone.
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I like how you start with something that is masked as an assertion when it's not. Such as "it could end the world!"
And then you proceed as if you actually made the assertion. "Since the world is endind..."
Funniest part is that I literally called exactly how religious anti-scientific greens such as yourself would construct the argument. And then I pre-empted it by pointing out why you wouldn't be able to make that argument in actual court.
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I think you missed every bit of the point. Which was that GDP is already a bad measure and a slight reduction does not indicate only slight harm to ordinary people.
The rest of the conclusions you think I made are not there.
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I didn't. I simply noted that you started with a sorta kinda assertion that was in fact a lie.
I can certainly also point out that you progressed into "GDP doesn't matter to normal people because I said so". Nevermind the fact that for some reason, you're not moving to live in wonderful low GDP nations, where according to your logic, you'd have a wonderful life and instead prefer to live in a very high GDP one.
"Do as I say, not as I do" is a favourite argument of anti-scientific Green faithful such as yourse
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But it punishes firms for past behavior with a punishment that was not known at the time.
You have just described every regulation ever introduced. Won't someone think of the poor people who invested in machinery to manufacture asbestos!
We should spend that money (Score:4, Interesting)
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Nuclear energy doesn't need a subsidy. It needs it's regulatory regime to be re-worked from the ground up, and we need some politicians with balls to tell NIMBYs to fuck off.
The government, society and regulatory bodies have hamstrung it with high costs. It doesn't need subsidies, it needs the source of those costs addressed.
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You have some excellent offshore wind resources, you should development. Loads of jobs, the cleanest and cheapest energy available, and you can upgrade your grid at the same time.
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If it uses reprocessed fission waste. Reactor designs that aren't pretext for uranium enrichment are a lot more resource efficient.
What a great time to be a lawyer. (Score:3)
Then there is the question of what is meant by "emissions". Energy companies buy / sell their commodities in complex markets. Is it the company that removed the carbon from the ground, or the one that sold it to end users? Also, do they really want to tax the energy producers, not consumers? Is the company that makes jet fuel somehow more at fault than the airline that uses it?
I have no problem with a carbon tax going forward, where what is being taxed is well defined, and companies have time to adjust their operations based on that tax. This though is just dumb - and if they try to pass it will be a gift to Republicans, and to attorneys everywhere.
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They are going to be taxing consumers. In the end, ALL taxes are paid by the citizenry, not by businesses - the businesses just raise prices to cover the new costs.
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They are going to be taxing consumers. In the end, ALL taxes are paid by the citizenry, not by businesses - the businesses just raise prices to cover the new costs.
Agree. The idea is that we might reduce demand for things which necessarily create pollution. (Obviously increasing costs for products which were polluting 20 years ago, but aren't today is utter muppetry).
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Largest polluting "companies" over the last 20 years. Can you imagine the mess over definitions with acquisitions, mergers, splits and bankruptcies of multi-national companies over the last 20 years? With many billions of $ at stake.
Another problem is that its just punishing companies for what they did in the past - which doesn't really reward people for improvements (i.e. not polluting today).
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I have no problem with a carbon tax going forward, where what is being taxed is well defined, and companies have time to adjust their operations based on that tax.
No, fuck them. The people running them knew what they were doing and deliberately did it anyway. Same with the investors. The only problem I have with this is that we're not stringing the boards of these companies up by their genitals and hanging them from the city walls.
The only people I feel bad for are the workers, and only so bad given that they could have trained for other jobs, and it's all of our responsibility to be informed and to make responsible decisions.
Sceptical (Score:2)
Anything we do creates polution. If we lift a finger, CO2 goes into the atmosphere. To pay the extra taxes, forwarded to the customer, we will need to lift two fingers.
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Multi-MW nuclear reactors produce less CO2 in a single day vs. equivalent coal to offset their entire construction. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but the break-even point won't be too far along. I don't think you realize the scale of how much a coal plant burns and how much of coal is carbon by mass. Concrete is a huge emissions producer, but a plant that's built to last many decades of use is probably not the place to worry about it.
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Stop putting solar panels over croplands!
But it [wikipedia.org] can work [nrel.gov] so [oregonstate.edu] well [energyindustryreview.com]!
Seriously, who is paving croplands for PV panels? Is that an actual thing? Sure it's not some straw man you were fed?
I understand concerns about replacing croplands completely - there are certainly legitimate issues here, we generally don't want to reduce food production at all, and farmers need to be a part of the plans too. In a lot of cases there's no need to touch cropland at all, there's no shortage of non-arable land we can use in many countries (and fear not, all the big ones
Well let's see... (Score:2)
The gas suppliers are not the polluters (Score:3, Interesting)
The people who burn gas, you and I, are the polluters. Just tax the carbon content of the fuels. This encourages people to burn less fuel, and encourages a switch to fuels with less carbon content. This is exactly what we want to happen.
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There's plenty of responsibility to go around. The organisation burning the fuel, the organisation drilling the fuel, they can both take some blame.
Re:The gas suppliers are not the polluters (Score:5, Interesting)
Problem with taxing the users is that it has a disproportionate effect on some of them. They will end up in cold homes and not being able to afford petrol.
Taxing the suppliers encourages them to offer alternatives that consumers can afford, and even to contribute to the cost of switching. The UK did this and it worked quite well, lots of people got free home upgrades from the bigger suppliers and the cost was spread out to everyone, including corporate shareholders.
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Problem with taxing the users is that it has a disproportionate effect on some of them. They will end up in cold homes and not being able to afford petrol.
It's almost like the government will have a new source of revue which they could then earmark for *looks left and right to see if any Americans are watching* social security.
If you have poor people freezing in homes the answer is to solve that problem directly, not fuck up the world with insanely low energy cost with unaccounted for externalities.
Where can we get some dough? Ah, oil companies (Score:2)
Politicians need some way to cover the costs of COVID without losing too many votes.
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Politicians need some way to cover the costs of COVID without losing too many votes.
Good. Fuck them into the ground. I say this as someone who gets 100% of their paycheck (currently) from an oil company. The sad reality though is the oil companies won't pay, they'll pass the costs on to consumers. The happy reality is the oil companies won't pay, they'll pass the costs on to consumers who may in the future think twice before driving a 5L V8 300m down the road to the gym just to use the treadmill.
more money? (Score:2)
Definitely necessary. (Score:2)
This legislation is definitely necessary, because I have been having trouble losing weight, and once they get energy prices as high as they want to make them, I simply won't be able to afford food any more.
Regressive Suggestion (Score:2)
We should simply ban Humans because ultimately the ONLY way to curb CO2 is to go back to pre-industrial living. I don't see the jet set progressive politicians living in 600 ft/sq living containers. That's just for us plebs .
New tax? (Score:2)
Perhaps just stop sending subsidies to fossil fuel companies. We were shipping ~$40B/year to them not too long ago. Just turn off that spigot.
No good deed will go unpunished.... (Score:2)
Maybe the democrats should focus on the last year or so, since let no one forget, that its those "polluting energy companies" that enabled society's growth before we had other technologies to generate that electricity.
As California implemented rotating blackouts for potential energy emergencies -- maybe we ought not to phase out some of those old gas fired plants. Most of their use in the past several years has been during periods with insufficient clean energy to meet demand. While they are closing due t
Re:This is how taxes can work. (Score:4, Insightful)
Since there's little chance of this even getting to a vote in the House, much less getting through the senate, I'm not going to hold my breath.
A more straightforward way to do this would be simply to put a tax on each ton of CO2 emitted, but the fossil-fuel-company lobbying machine has already got their machinery in gear to attack that one, so I guess it makes some sense to propose something different.
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Europe already have a CO2 tax.
At least some countries do in one form or another.
Re:This is how taxes can work. (Score:5, Informative)
Here are the 16 EU countries + UK with a CO2 tax: https://taxfoundation.org/carb... [taxfoundation.org]
Germany plans to introduce one at the start of 2022: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de... [umweltbundesamt.de]
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The objection is to retroactive taxation.
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The objection is to retroactive taxation.
So, the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is 39 years. Furthermore, there's a feedback effect where release of some greenhouse gasses causes release of others (such as methane from the Arctic). How about just taxing them for the ongoing amount of CO2 that they produced that remains in the atmosphere and any ongoing damage? If they come up with processes to cheaply remove CO2 and reduce that taxation then that solves everyone's problem.
Re:This is how taxes can work. (Score:4, Interesting)
So I went through their claim and numbers for my nation (Finland) and it makes no sense whatsoever. The only references to tax they're talking about that I can find are in fuel taxation, which is among the highest in the world in Finland and has been for a long time. It's pretty telling that reference from that page for their claim for my nation from International Energy Agency goes to a page that doesn't exist.
I went to re-read the relevant law that is measured in percent per litre, not Euros and it's per litre, and it's set arbitrarily based on government's income needs because fuel taxation is really not about "reducing co2 emissions" but mostly about collecting funds for the government.
Here is the relevant law:
https://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/... [finlex.fi]
Dates and numbers indeed do not match your article, but this is the actual law, not an article with references that point toward 404 pages.
For example, methane and jet fuel is fully exempt, except for when travelling "for fun" (huvi-ilmailu). While traffic petrol is massively taxed and was massively taxed before, it's just that tax had a different name and diesel is taxed at a far lesser rate. This is pretty much universally agreed on even by our Green party. You can't really reduce travelling by car in most of the nation, because ours is a nation with one of the lowest population densities on the planet with extremely long travel times even within cities (my native city of 200k people was initially classified as a "village" by EU because it didn't meet population density requirements to be classified as a city).
But yeah, technically it does indeed exist. It's just that no one here really pretends that it's a "carbon tax" because it in now way actually follows the emissions even though the law itself nominally suggests that it should, before offering numbers that massively tax petrol, have much lower tax on diesel and no tax on jet fuel for example. It's simply a tax that existed long before it was called "carbon dioxide tax" that is adjusted based on government's income needs, not environmental considerations.
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I admit I didn't check their data or sources myself at all, sorry. But I do think it is fair enough to count any tax specifically on fossil fuels as a CO2 tax, whatever the motivation, as long as there is no equivalent tax on energy from sources that don't lead to CO2 emissions.
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Yes, I checked the numbers. They literally renamed part of the old fuel tax into "carbon dioxide tax". The reason it's confusing is because not even our Greens think it's about carbon dioxide. Everyone knows it's just renaming the already existing tax to please a small portion of electorate. You can tell from the language of relevant law, where it starts by stating that "law should be determined by lifetime CO2 emissions" and then proceeds to generate tables of actual that are specifically against this stat
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Let me give you an example. Diesel has comparable CO2 emissions, but back in 1994 it had more. In addition to being way more polluting in terms of acid rain causing gasses since that was before urea exhaust injection systems and the primary reason for particulate pollution in city centres in the summer, because as you know, in the winter major cause of pollution is spiked tyres.
Diesel tax on the other hand is about a third less than gasoline tax. Because that's how the original fuel tax was implemented befo
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Can you point me to where I can find this CO2 tax on my tax receipts? I've never seen it.
Do you run a business producing CO2? No? Then I'm not surprised you don't see it on *your* tax receipts. That doesn't mean that it isn't on someone's tax receipt and then passed on to your royal Ignoranceness as a cost.
Re:This is how taxes can work. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's something that countries with properly functional taxation system have. You get it at the end of yearly cycle here in Finland straight from the tax agency. Initially you get a prefilled tax suggestion, which you can send back with corrections if there are any, and after they're done with processing it you get a final receipt from the tax agency which breaks down all your taxes.
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Re:This is how taxes can work. (Score:5, Informative)
Between 55% and 75% of the price you pay for fuel in the UK is tax. (There's a fixed element, so the percentage varies as the underlying fuel price changes).
The knock-on impact on the rest of the economy? More local shops and services, investment in public transport.
Fuel here does cost too much, and we mock when people in the US complain about $4/gallon prices, but the economy copes just fine with it. The Government would just raise the same taxes through other routes if it didn't use motorists as a cash cow.
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The knock-on impact on the rest of the economy? More local shops and services, investment in public transport.
You say that like it's a good thing, but both local shops and public transport are very expensive. Money spent on those cannot be spent on other things, thus lowering the overall quality of life.
Fuel here does cost too much, and we mock when people in the US complain about $4/gallon prices, but the economy copes just fine with it.
Fuel costs are often hidden and fairly small compared to other costs like labor, so you don't notice its effects on the larger economy. However, let it rise too much, and you'll start seeing them. The economy will very much grind to a halt if you impose a $10 / gallon fuel tax. Either that or you have black markets
Re:This is how taxes can work. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your analysis is flawed. For instance local shops aren't expensive, and they boost the local economy, requiring lower taxes by municipal authorities.
Public transport is inconvenient and expensive for some journeys but quicker and easier for others. Good fucking luck driving to Westminster for a 9am meeting. Mass public transport allows greater movement which has economic benefits, and reduces congestion on limited resources (also known as roads), boosting their economic value too.
You could have your $15 lunch if you didn't have to drive every time you want to go shopping, or go to a bar, or visit your doctor, or get a haircut, or send a parcel through the post, or see your friends, or take your kids to school. I can do all of those things by walking ten minutes or less, even though I live in a rural village with no crime.
Why can't you?
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'strong towns'
Many American cities are just not built for walking and that's the least of their problems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Re:This is how taxes can work. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is how taxes can work. (Score:5, Insightful)
You remember those tariffs Trump placed on products from China, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, France, EU, etc?
Not only were they taxes on the American consumer but his failure of a trade war [axios.com] ended up hurting [reuters.com], not helping [go.com] the U.S. economy [forbes.com] too.
They didn't bring back [wsj.com] the steel jobs he promised either.
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There isn't any problem that cannot be fixed by the application of a tax. LOL. Classic Democrat thinking.
As opposed to what? Government has two methods of enacting policy. Tax and regulation. I suspect you were going to say something equally stupid if this was simply a regulation as well. If you don't want government then move to some 3rd world shithole which doesn't have one.
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But taxing past behavior? That's an Ex Post Facto law [wikipedia.org]. Legal now? Nah, we'll just make it bad later!
Even if it's for "a good reason" there's a reason that these types of laws are just a HORRIBLE idea in general.
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Not to mention the fact that much of the natural gas and oil extraction in the USA is already licensed and regulated through the Federal or State government. Retroactive taxation under these circumstances is ridiculous.
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Let's hope they don't forget the US military, which is the single biggest greenhouse gas producer on the planet.
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
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Re:This is how taxes can work. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an incentive to charge more, not an incentive to change. Scapegoating the oil companies won't help anyone, we've all benefitted from and abused oil.
I don't see the problem. Do you not wonder why in many parts of the world cars are smaller and more fuel efficient? Precisely because the costs are passed to consumers who then re-think how they use their energy.
You saw that directly happen in the USA when the oil price spiked massively a few years back. This resulted in a huge dip in oversized all American trucks without a reduction in the numbers of cars sold, and for the first time the rest of the world looked on and thought that the USA may start producing "normal" cars rather than driving little bubba to school in Ford F350 SuperDutys.
That is how taxes work. They get passed on to consumers who then drive the final choice: Do you absorb the cost of your pollution, or do you seek alternatives. If the pollution is within the control of the oil companies (e.g. methane flaring) then the question becomes a business decision. Invest in capturing, recoup investment cost and then charge your customers a lower price than the competitors, or pass on the full tax to the customers and watch them ween themselves off your product.
Oil companies don't emit CO2 (much anyway). You and I do. We're the one who sets their product on fire.
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This only works if the cost of fossil energy is relatively close to the price of green energy. Pricing pressure will keep the price relatively close to the same (or advantage green energy). These companies make huge profits. They have plenty of cartel-like behaviors that keep their prices well above supply and demand levels.
Re: This is how taxes can work. (Score:2)
And of course, such a piece of legislation has pretty much zero chance of passing through the US Congress.
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Which do you think will be the outcome?
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Storage? How about reprocessing and new reactor designs? Let's not be stupid here.
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Lol! That's what cracks me up the most. These assholes try to sophist their way into comparing the oil companies to the tobacco companies. Why, who knew about..fucking pollution and the most basic of greenhouse effects?! Why, how were we to know, those evil oil execs knew and lied to us?!
Can you imagine the utter fucking asshole it takes to present that argument seriously?
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Except you are forgetting about the all mighty free market. If these big corporations are being taxed for their CO2 production and pass that tax on to their customers it leaves room for a competitor that doesn't pollute to the level that the tax kicks in to enter the market. That new player can sell their product for less and gain market share. The big corp that is being taxed now has to decide if they want to eat the cost of the tax or clean up their production so that they fall below the level that the ta