Which companies, and to what extent? My internal model says that this is as simple as telling them they have to contract with somebody to dispose it properly.
Electric utilities. Coal plants produced a lot of mercury pollution and adding filters cost money. Given that burning fossil fuels cause the most mercury pollution it’s a really strange argument to treat that as something separate from mercury pollution.
Also mercury pollution is much more localized with clear, more immediate consequences than dealCO2 pollution. It doesnt suffer from any ‘common good’ problems.
Do you think that lowered childhood IQ isn’t a common good issue? That seems like a pretty a strange argument.
I don’t understand your model of this at all, do you think if CO2 wasn’t a controversial topic, we could just raise gas taxes and people would be fine?
I don’t think “just raise gas taxes” is an effective method to dealing with the issue. As an aside, just because the German public cares very much about CO2 doesn’t mean that our government stops subventioning long commutes to work. It doesn’t stop our government either from shutting down our nuclear power plants.
The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated fine in an environment of little public pressure.
I do agree with the sentiment that it’s important to discuss solutions to reducing carbon emissions sector by sector. If there would have been less public pressure, I do think it’s plausible that expert conference discussions would have been more willing to focus on individual sectors and discuss what’s needed in those.
The kind of elite consensus that brought the Kyoto Protocol could also have had a chance to create cap-and-trade.
Electric utilities. Coal plants produced a lot of mercury pollution and adding filters cost money. Given that burning fossil fuels cause the most mercury pollution it’s a really strange argument to treat that as something separate from mercury pollution.
Do you think that lowered childhood IQ isn’t a common good issue? That seems like a pretty a strange argument.
I don’t think “just raise gas taxes” is an effective method to dealing with the issue. As an aside, just because the German public cares very much about CO2 doesn’t mean that our government stops subventioning long commutes to work. It doesn’t stop our government either from shutting down our nuclear power plants.
The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated fine in an environment of little public pressure.
I do agree with the sentiment that it’s important to discuss solutions to reducing carbon emissions sector by sector. If there would have been less public pressure, I do think it’s plausible that expert conference discussions would have been more willing to focus on individual sectors and discuss what’s needed in those.
The kind of elite consensus that brought the Kyoto Protocol could also have had a chance to create cap-and-trade.