Who's going to pay for carbon capture? Definitely not the current polluters who benefit from fossil fuel prices that don't include the cost to clean that up. This is like a fossil fuel subsidy from a debt left to someone else to pay.
>Who's going to pay for carbon capture? Definitely not the current polluters who benefit from fossil fuel prices that don't include the cost to clean that up.
Carbon emitters through carbon pricing schemes. They already cover more than 20% of worldwide emissions, with China joining a few years ago.
Should get paid? Or should clean it up? The problem is this is energy and resources that could be spent on actually solving the problem at its source instead of finding ways to maintain the status quo.
The entity who caused the pollution should be responsible for paying to clean it up. For logistical purposes it might make sense to tax at the point of production/sale rather than actual emission, eg. taxes at gas stations rather than some sort of monitoring system on every car.
> The problem is this is energy and resources that could be spent on actually solving the problem at its source instead of finding ways to maintain the status quo.
If the alternatives are actually cheaper, the market will naturally work itself out, because polluters would be incentivized to switch. Nobody uses plastic utensils in place of reusable ones, not because the government banned them, but because everyone knows the latter are so much cheaper.
You literally can't just "clean it up" it's not possible. This is there American hyper-individualistic mindset at work. The problem and solution is cut and dry, anything else is a comfortable lie.
>You literally can't just "clean it up" it's not possible.
explain? at least with carbon since it's fungible and global it's probably the easiest to clean up, compared to exxon trying to clean an oil spill or whatever.
The difference here is that it's not deposit to encourage recycling, it's just a tax, and it's not a discrete thing you're getting taxed on, it's everything. It's costing everybody more and people are being paid twice. I'm thinking especially of the companies trying to sequester carbon in the wells they empty - they end up making money both ways.
>The difference here is that it's not deposit to encourage recycling, it's just a tax,
It's a tax to encourage the alternatives. If an electric car costs more than an ICE car, then taxing ICE cars through a carbon tax will make the electric car more attractive, at least on the margins.
> It's costing everybody more and people are being paid twice. I'm thinking especially of the companies trying to sequester carbon in the wells they empty - they end up making money both ways.
Similar logic to the above applies. Oil companies might be able to charge more for a barrel of oil, but it's not like that barrel of oil is suddenly more useful. That's bad for oil companies because it makes the economics of their product worse. They have to do more "stuff" to sell a given barrel of oil, but their competitors (solar panels or whatever) don't.
> I'm thinking especially of the companies trying to sequester carbon in the wells they empty - they end up making money both ways.
Sure, but the reason solar panels are popular is because they're (mostly) the cheapest way to generate power. By adding an additional tax to petroleum products based on say sequestering costs (as opposed to some made-up I won't chop down a forest offset) it encourages non-petroleum products to be used.
I think everyone should pay for their own externalities. Put gas in your car, and you are generating the externality, so expect to pay some company a gas tax to remove that carbon.
Buy electricity from coal and the power plant is the emitter, who should pay for capture. However, if you are a electricity customer, expect that cost to be passed on to you on your bill.
Or a way to take money from green investment funds: you're never finished, but you're always only two years away. Both directly from governments and from mandates on the oil companies to do green investments.
