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[Reelya]

I guess if you count the people actively trying to get rid of the nature near them, there are costs.

There's also the cost of me raking leaves via lawnmower every fall, or say fallen branches from storms.

That's in line with the actual point I made. People who have plenty of that sort of nature right next to them aren't going to jump at a "fund more public parks" proposal.

[Frumple]

You might be surprised. The parks in rural areas can be surprisingly resilient funding wise. Probably look a bit different from ones in more developed places, but dedicated parkland isn't exactly ignored outside cities. Jumping may not be involved, but the audience mentioned may not be as resistant as you're assuming.

[Doomblade187]

You might be surprised. The parks in rural areas can be surprisingly resilient funding wise. Probably look a bit different from ones in more developed places, but dedicated parkland isn't exactly ignored outside cities. Jumping may not be involved, but the audience mentioned may not be as resistant as you're assuming.

Yeah, gotta second this from a suburban view - the suburbs have lots of parks. As far as I know, rural areas are big fans of having wildlife management areas and such as well - good for outdoor recreation.

[Devastator]

That does have advantages though. If you tell twenty people you want to see 95% of them comply with X, you will get 0% compliance and twenty arguments why the other nineteen people should comply with X. If instead you demand 100% compliance, you will get 0% compliance and twenty arguments why they personally believe they shouldn't have to comply. It's easier to deal with the latter case piecemeal without being accused of playing favorites.

Plus which, politics is the only arena in which you want to ask the impossible in the hopes of getting half of it, because then everyone gets their own little carve-out to take back home to their constituents and brag about.

Mmm, that doesn't seem true, then.  If 100% is what's being offered, and what's actually going to be gotten is whatever is chosen specifically to go after, then that's not the right goal.

For instance, one of the things Sanders has rejected is the idea of a carbon tax.  The whole point of a carbon tax is so it's very difficult to have carve-outs, while providing people with the ability to choose what parts are important to them, assuming it's set to a reasonable amount.  Then you can get investment into new technology, reductions in emissions, and generation of additional revenue.  All without an impossible requirement, and you can put a simple hard number on it that's hard to evade.

Why reject that, but then demand a 100% renewable grid?  If neither accomplishable, I'd rather go with one that works.

There are further issues other than peak generation and storage, btw.  In BC, thanks to historical decisions that are currently unacceptable on environmental levels, (lots of protests against the new large hydro dam, for instance, which is renawable energy, but not the right kind of renewable energy), there are some very large reservoirs that have essentially all the energy storage that could be required.  The remaining few percent are for situations like emergency backups at hospitals or medical or research facilities, and portable or temporary generation for situations such as temporary work camps.  Those certainly count for GHG production, but I'd find it hard to say it's unacceptable for a hospital to not have a generator to cover for an emergency outage.

There are workable goals to pursue, that can lead to real, serious improvements.  Grid modernization funds, rebates for home renewable kits, rebates for home efficiency gear, standards commissions for production of gear and equipment.  And yeah, things like soft carbon taxes.  There's lots of room for improvement, not just on electricity generation, but lots of individual home and industrial gear that can be improved.

That's why I don't like seeing 100% goals.  Everyone knows it isn't going to be accomplished, so why not have real, specific policy planks instead?  So everyone knows what to expect, and can work with the upcoming problems, instead of being held responsable for failure to meet an unattainable goal.

Also, McTraveller, I think you're pretty much wholly wrong.

this isn't going to manifest itself as people having lower bills or more stuff today - what it's going to do is result in lower costs relative to no investment in them today for things at some indeterminate time in the future.

Well.. why not?  Reform in health care is only necessary because people are having problems, be it with too expensive bills or inability to get proper treatment.  If there are no negative outcomes, then it doesn't need to be reformed.

Saying that the problem is with people evaluating things in dollars or people being unwilling to give up what they love.. well, that's not right.  Many, many problems have been solved by acknowledging people are people, and coming up with solutions or working with them.

For instance, urban smog has, at least in the west, declined massively.  Same with acid rain.  Oceanic dead zones are a particularly good example of a situation that is fixable and has had serious progress made on it.

The solution?  All those problems had a combination of specific meaningful goals, and progress that worked with people and didn't demand things on an all-or-nothing unilateral base.

100% requirements on absurdly short length?  Well, that's not helpful in providing any reduction or any accomplishments.  Saying the problem is people?  Same issue.  Instead of analyzing the problem and solution in a systematic and scientific way, it's just shifting the blame over to something else.

[Devastator]

Yeah, gotta second this from a suburban view - the suburbs have lots of parks. As far as I know, rural areas are big fans of having wildlife management areas and such as well - good for outdoor recreation.

Depends on the specifics.  Some are popular enough, some are not.  I'm thinking about the bear hunting ban that went into effect here a few years ago, which should benefit precisely nobody except people who feel better knowing that trophies are evil.

I mean, sure, there's a growing population, but a few more bears shot in encounters with humans is okay, when charging tourists tons of money that would be spent ensuring a stable supply of bears isn't.

[Reelya]

For instance, one of the things Sanders has rejected is the idea of a carbon tax. 
...
Why reject that, but then demand a 100% renewable grid?  If neither accomplishable, I'd rather go with one that works.

You're missing the point. Passing a "carbon tax" is one of those all or nothing things I mentioned. You either pass it, or it fails to pass, and it has zero effect. There's no "95% actual benefit" for almost passing a carbon tax.

But if you say "100% renewable grid" but only get to "95% renewable grid" you do actually get 95% of the benefits. It's just being ridiculously pedantic to moan about how the last 5% of the promise "technically" wasn't met. 5% is only fucking 5%. It's not important hence why it's glossed over.

Whereas a carbon tax has a low chance of passing. Missing the number of votes by 5% *is* important for a carbon tax since that means you've failed to get any carbon tax at all.

Additionally, there are a many ways to promote renewables, so you can take multiple approaches if one fails, whereas passing a carbon tax is all-eggs-in-one-basket since it could be blocked by congress, the senate, the states, the supreme court etc. Any one link fails and the whole thing fails.

EDIT: another difference is how a carbon tax works. the idea behind a tax to enact change is to force costs onto everyone, and that makes everyone change their behavior. everyone needs to be poked to change. some people will be in situations where it's still cheaper just to pay the tax rather than change to be cleaner. Whereas if you pass regulations forcing large utilities to "go green" then you only have to harass a small number of companies to do change. Whereas the carbon tax idea is basically "everyone will have to pay more for everything until you all learn to change!!!" But the individual may not be given that choice and the large companies may just force the carbon tax onto consumers, in areas where consumers are locked in and can't really choose.

[Trekkin]

That's why I don't like seeing 100% goals.  Everyone knows it isn't going to be accomplished, so why not have real, specific policy planks instead?  So everyone knows what to expect, and can work with the upcoming problems, instead of being held responsable[sic] for failure to meet an unattainable goal.

Because to every company in America, "working with upcoming problems" means "weaseling out of our obligations to everyone but our shareholders." If you propose a carbon tax, that means paying lobbyists to shoehorn in an exception for their specific industry or getting the state to give them a tax break to offset it or any of the other games companies play with money -- or just flat-out ignoring it and daring someone to sue about it. If you propose a <100% reduction in nonrenewable power generation, that means establishing that their particular  concern should be in the nonrenewable fraction for whatever reason, or that the percentage should be dragged down to meet their needs. Historically, what is "achievable" has been twisted by conservatives to mean what doesn't need them to change anything, so the less wiggle room one starts with, the better.

Then, too, specific policy planks aren't compatible with American policy. Debating about things we don't understand is almost a sport, here, as is demanding to be taken seriously for no good reason. If you give people a target number like 95%, you will get a hundred million armchair experts on Facebook parroting the same factoids about why it should be 90% or 99% or 0% or my ideological opponents should die in a fire%; if you give them actual policy proposals, they will find or invent some consequence they disagree with or mine a quote they think sounds dumb and bikeshed about it just for the sake of sounding impressive until the news cycle turns over.

Don't think of the 100% proposal as a law; America doesn't do those anymore. Think of it as a slogan to rally the mob behind our next dictator, something short and memeable to chant in the civil war to come. It serves well enough as that.

[McTraveller]

I just had a thought - instead of subsidies or tax rebates, why doesn't the government provide zero-interest loans for green tech? This would be both better for tax revenue and would get more people into "green tech" faster.  The government should do things that aren't commercially viable: because the benefits of "green tech" are diffuse, no private company will offer cheap (enough) loans for it because they can't get enough direct benefit.  But the "government" gets "all" of the diffuse benefit, so should be willing to do this.

Consider tax rebates versus tax refunds for an electric vehicle purchase.  Consider both of these to be additional spending, so must be funded by government borrowing.  Consider a $5000 tax rebate, at 3% interest (which is close enough to government 10-year bond rates for an example). With zero additional tax revenue: After 5 years the total cost to taxpayers for this is going to be about $5800.  Now consider a $50k zero-interest (to the consumer) loan with a 5 year term.  Even if the government borrowed that $50k at 3%, at the end of the 5 year term taxpayers will be out only $3300.  So this is more cost effective to the public in direct dollar terms, plus the benefit of having more green tech...

[Trekkin]

I just had a thought - instead of subsidies or tax rebates, why doesn't the government provide zero-interest loans for green tech? This would be both better for tax revenue and would get more people into "green tech" faster.  The government should do things that aren't commercially viable: because the benefits of "green tech" are diffuse, no private company will offer cheap (enough) loans for it because they can't get enough direct benefit.  But the "government" gets "all" of the diffuse benefit, so should be willing to do this.

What green technologies in particular are you thinking of, though? All cynicism about the government aside, solar panels and electric cars and LED lightbulbs and things have a significant impact on the environment to manufacture, so spurring a lot of people to install them spontaneously might actually end up at a net loss if you factor in the waste from replacing whatever less green equivalent still had life in it.

[PTTG??]

Wait, where are people getting the idea that 100% carbon free is impossible?

[McTraveller]

@Trekkin: That sounds very defeatist.

Yes, LEDs and solar panels have a manufacturing impact.  But do LEDs, solar panels, etc. have a greater impact than the things they replace?  If they do then why are we using them at all?

For solar panels - nobody is replacing anything than other solar with them.

For cars, people are going to buy newly manufactured cars at about a steady pace anyway, so there's not much "extra" waste for people being encouraged to buy "green" vehicles over "non-green."  I haven't seen good numbers on how the estimated recycling/replacement impact of a battery compares to the impact of continuous ICE usage.

All that said - I was basically musing at alternatives to "carbon tax" which is quite full of problems.

PREVIEW EDIT:  @PTTG: 100% carbon free is not necessarily impossible.  I don't think it's desirable though - there are many use cases where you want the mass energy density or convenience of hydrocarbon fuel.  Or did you mean 100% "carbon free", such as still using hydrocarbon fuels but they are synthesized?

[wierd]

Wait, where are people getting the idea that 100% carbon free is impossible?

It's a math numbers, and sunken costs exercise.

1) Fossil fuel contains more energy per kilogram than even the best batteries, (short of nuclear ones, which we dont want on the road for obvious reasons.)
2) That fuel is reasonably safe to handle and transport. (Compared to charged batteries, which can explode when shorted.)
3) A great deal of the freight transport, and public transportation infrastructure in the US is centered around the use of internal combustion engines, with service station placement consistent with the drive range allowed by this more energy dense fuel.

This leads pundits to posit--

1) To get the same driving distance from an electric vehicle, you would need a significantly larger and heavier battery. This directly reduces the safety and potential freight hauling capabilities of the resulting transport vehicle, which would seriously imperil an already margin-scraping transportation industry.
2) These batteries would be a significant highway and recharge center safety risk, due to the volatile nature of the battery electrolytes.
3) The costs necessary to refit the freight industry's fleet of vehicles, and to completely replace ICE based personal transport vehicles with pure electric ones, with the sprawling and geographically disparate localities that persons must commute between, would be a mammoth expense that would bankrupt many businesses, or leave many populations stranded.

As such, these pundits assert (often belligerently) that there is simply no replacement for fossil fuels in these roles, and thus deride any and all efforts to innovate those problems away.

[Trekkin]

For cars, people are going to buy newly manufactured cars at about a steady pace anyway, so there's not much "extra" waste for people being encouraged to buy "green" vehicles over "non-green."  I haven't seen good numbers on how the estimated recycling/replacement impact of a battery compares to the impact of continuous ICE usage.

I think this is where we got some wires crossed, because I certainly didn't mean to sound defeatist. I was trying to point out the major problem around which incentives of this sort need to work: how do we make it favorable for people to replace old cars with new electric cars (for example) without making it favorable for people to replace their new cars with electric cars or buying cars they don't need? The reason I bring up manufacturing costs is because if you simply make a thing cheaper, people will buy more of it. They won't necessarily buy more of it instead of what they were going to buy anyway, at least not in aggregate, so we do have to ask how we're calibrating to incentive to make it just a little better than the alternative without being so much better that, say, people buy solar in a region with little sun or buy up a crapload of LED bulbs they never use because hey, they're cheap, or buy a new electric car much earlier than they otherwise would. In the case of vehicles in particular, you really don't want to make them so affordable that people stop carpooling or taking the bus because they can have a car now.

[scourge728]

Well the obvious solution is to give people the ability to trade in cars from before a certain year (which would move up each year) to get a reduced cost on an electric car

[wierd]

There's perverse disincentives at work there though.

Typically, the people driving an old rattletrap are driving that rattletrap because they cannot afford something better. (and nearly anything would be better than what they are driving.)

An electric vehicle is very modern tech; There are no "economy" options in the market.  As such, even with the discount given, the people who need to make the switch are unable to make the switch.

Meanwhile, there are rich people looking for ways to game whatever incentive program you try to offer, to further enrich themselves. (either with material goods, like redundant electric vehicles they really dont need, but rather like as a status symbol-- Or by obtaining said vehicles and then selling them in the open market and undercutting the industry by abusing your subsidy.)


This is a more difficult problem to tackle than is immediately apparent.