The Truth About Carbon Taxes

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References:
[1] Economic impacts of each disaster stedc.tamucc.edu/files/HARVEY_...
www.nature.com/articles/s4189...
www.chron.com/politics/articl...
[2] www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/cl....
[3] www.nrel.gov/docs/fy18osti/70...
[4]www.convertunits.com/from/MJ/...
[5] www.carbontax.org/whats-a-car...
[6] www.wri.org/insights/direct-a...
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Credits:
Writer/Narrator: Brian McManus
Editor: Dylan Hennessy (www.behance.net/dylanhennessy1)
Animator: Mike Ridolfi (www.moboxgraphics.com/)
Sound: Graham Haerther (haerther.net/)
Thumbnail: Simon Buckmaster / forgottentowel
Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images
Thank you to AP Archive for access to their archival footage.
Music by Epidemic Sound: epidemicsound.com/creator
Thank you to my patreon supporters: Adam Flohr, Henning Basma, Hank Green, William Leu, Tristan Edwards, Ian Dundore, John & Becki Johnston. Nevin Spoljaric, Jason Clark, Thomas Barth, Johnny MacDonald, Stephen Foland, Alfred Holzheu, Abdulrahman Abdulaziz Binghaith, Brent Higgins, Dexter Appleberry, Alex Pavek, Marko Hirsch, Mikkel Johansen, Hibiyi Mori. Viktor Józsa, Ron Hochsprung

[@AlexandersLeftNipple]

I never thought I would live in a time where the phrase “the coal was yeeted from the electric grid” would be so fitting in a science-based video. 10/10

[@futurespeak9648]

Well I never thought I'd live in a time where my dog stole my wife's brand new stockings and would not let them go, while growling at me like a Harley Davidson motorcycle, but here we are.

[@stephenbrickwood1602]

yeeted means ??

[@johnnycruiser2846]

@@stephenbrickwood1602 thrown away

[@stephenbrickwood1602]

@@johnnycruiser2846 33 years ago the UK Prime Minister said to the UN that global warming, climate change, was the biggest threat to the world. We are still doing little and in Australia 50.7C temperatures are being recorded! Our bush fires are massive, and storms are very destructive. Governments have lost elections because of business lies. Australia sells $billions every year to china.

[@cristiano5774]

In the past there was a lot worser weather... Jeez you guys are brainwashed or smth?

[@Eggster68]

We live in a global economy. Any carbon tax MUST apply equally to imported goods. Failure to do so will create an unfair advantage for imported goods. The two issues must be linked and addressed in a clear manner. The concurrent tax reductions mentioned in the video do not address this. To put this another way, offshoring pollution does not address climate change.

[@ordan787]

Really good point! Though it seems difficult to implement in practice Carbon taxes are usually charged when you buy the energy (electricity, petrol, etc) But imported goods get the benefit of cheaper, dirtier energy. So how do you know how much to tax? Who exactly do you charge, and when? I imagine it'd need to work like an import tax, but then are you charging purely on the country of origin?

[@prophetsspaceengineering2913]

@@ordan787 Yeah, this is going to be a huge problem. Not to mention that there will be a lot of fudging the numbers and different views on the matter. Some governments will likely claim such a system would be highly discriminating and they wouldn't even be entirely wrong.

[@ArchmageIlmryn]

@@ordan787 It will probably be difficult to to logistically, but the theoretically optimal solution would be to charge a tariff based on difference in carbon tax - so any nation which implements carbon taxes that are just as high would be able to import tariff-free.

[@ordan787]

@@ArchmageIlmryn right, you'd need to penalise high polluting countries, and reward low polluting ones. The problem is that to fairly charge, you also need to account for the item imported. 1 tonne of lumber has a very different carbon cost compared to 1 tonne of laptops. If you don't consider the imported good, you'd unfairly over tax the lumber, or under tax the laptops (both are really bad) But I can't really think of a robust way to figure out the energy costs of an imported product :/

[@ordan787]

@@prophetsspaceengineering2913 > "some governments would say it's highly discriminating" That's true! And they'd be right! Even if you could perfectly account for the emissions of an imported good, many countries aren't economically ready or able to make the transition! If you're not careful about it, you could well ruin the economies of a lot of developing nations, because you're taking what export industries they have and slapping tariffs on them. We're all in this shit together, so the international community needs to help developing countries to leapfrog highly polluting technologies... easier said than done though...

[@Vaporizer_YT]

It’s probably important to point out that very rarely in the history of US taxes, has the tax money gone largely to their intended relief programs

[@wesjones6370]

And speaking from experience, I can tell you it won't here either. We've had. a carbon tax here in Canada for 7 years now. And the results are quite difinitive. Markets have not progressed. It has hurt industries so badly, especially on the international scale, in ways that couldn't be predicted, that exceptions had to be created for airliners, farmers, and even many energy producers...which ultimately wound up creating even more problems...since the money that was supposed to be returned to the citizens based on income levels, but massive portions end up going to corporations to prevent collapse...which leaves local businesses in the dust as corporations get subsidized, but small producers don't. And to top it all off, carbon emissions are still rising here at the exact same rate they were prior to the carbon tax....with the only difference being that life is becoming more unaffordable every year. almost 1/3 of Canadians have had to go to the food bank this last year, as they cannot afford their groceries that have skyrocketed as a result of the carbon tax. ....and on top of all of that, the tax winds up punishing actual green producers due to the flaw of central planning: Greenhouses in Ontario used to produce tomatoes that were far more environmental, and far more sustainable than shipping in from Mexico. Yet, the production of CO2 is taxed...and so the Greenhouse, which requires CO2 to be used (in a contained environment where it is taken up by plants and doesn't emit into the environment). As a result, the carbon tax has priced these out of markets, where by retailers are forced to ship tomatoes in from Mexico, using fossil fuels to transport, and paying no carbon taxes to produce.

[@teddyruxpin3811]

@@wesjones6370 How does growing tomatoes produce CO2? Plants absorb CO2 and produce oxygen.

[@leerman22]

@@teddyruxpin3811 Harvesting produces CO2, biofuels produce more CO2 than they remove.

[@bademoxy]

@@leerman22 and Earth's vegetation cannot just CONSUME this carbon as NUTRIENT because in your view "photosynthesis doesn't support your narrative".

[@BeyondFreeThink]

Remember the fundamental pillar: If you can't question it, it's propaganda, not science.

[@Usammityduzntafraidofanythin]

Which "garbage in garbage out" axioms did you spot in this video?

[@BeyondFreeThink]

@@Usammityduzntafraidofanythin Who'd have the time to entertain an authoritarian loving NPC.

[@gwilymyddraig]

Life is short. Be sure to troll youtube threads as much as possible. 👉

[@Tinjinladakh]

Wish govt. don't shut Nuclear Energy, with current technology its very safe. the anti try to use example of Chernobyl but it was 36 year ago. Now we have best tech.

[@biagio177]

Finally someone that understands!

[@PostWarKids]

Can we antinuclear use Fukushima as an example instead which was 9 years ago?

[@bassesatta9235]

they arent slowing it down because of chernobyl, they’re doing it because its pricey, and profit margins arent as high

[@Aryan_0]

Ikr, you either use nuclear with a small potential chance of meltdown, or fossil fuels with a large carbon impact

[@randomuser5443]

@@PostWarKids The Japanese decided that they were smarter than Mother Nature. Soviets were just inadequate at making reactors

[@randomuser5443]

EU considered removing yachts from the carbon tax. Just saying im not trusting these taxes.

[@mattkissmyasstyrants8676]

Biggest grift scheme known to man.

[@robertjonker8131]

also no fuel tax on private jets. Its ridiculous and totally unacceptable

[@quintessenceSL]

I recall the tax rebates given to telecos to the tune of billions to cover the US with high speed internet. It's only been about 20 years. I'm sure they will get right on it. I also note no change in these scenarios in the use of nuclear. So this ends up being a subsidy to wind and solar for "reasons".

[@NNFaNRacing]

Then the propaganda is working as planned...

[@mattkissmyasstyrants8676]

@@robertjonker8131 or giant SUVs that eat Priuses.. Like the one driven by noted climate change actor Mr Skuu yorr FEEEdum! Arnold Adolph Schwarzenegger.

[@chodeshadar18]

I wonder how good the computer simulations are at predicting how taxing cigarettes would put cigarette companies out of business.

[@wesjones6370]

We don't need to just look at simulations. We have real world examples. We've had. a carbon tax here in Canada for 7 years now. And the results are quite difinitive. Markets have not progressed. It has hurt industries so badly, especially on the international scale, in ways that couldn't be predicted, that exceptions had to be created for airliners, farmers, and even many energy producers...which ultimately wound up creating even more problems...since the money that was supposed to be returned to the citizens based on income levels, but massive portions end up going to corporations to prevent collapse...which leaves local businesses in the dust as corporations get subsidized, but small producers don't. And to top it all off, carbon emissions are still rising here at the exact same rate they were prior to the carbon tax....with the only difference being that life is becoming more unaffordable every year. almost 1/3 of Canadians have had to go to the food bank this last year, as they cannot afford their groceries that have skyrocketed as a result of the carbon tax. ....and on top of all of that, the tax winds up punishing actual green producers due to the flaw of central planning: Greenhouses in Ontario used to produce tomatoes that were far more environmental, and far more sustainable than shipping in from Mexico. Yet, the production of CO2 is taxed...and so the Greenhouse, which requires CO2 to be used (in a contained environment where it is taken up by plants and doesn't emit into the environment). As a result, the carbon tax has priced these out of markets, where by retailers are forced to ship tomatoes in from Mexico, using fossil fuels to transport, and paying no carbon taxes to produce.

[@nApucco]

This was very informative and interesting. Please don't shy away from these deep dives into a specific study. It's what we need right now. It's the first time I have heared of this study and I'm looking forward to searching about the state and progress of carbon taxes here in Europe and Switzerland now.

[@oldmandoinghighkicksonlyin1368]

Less coal in the west means China will use it more. The west stops using coal, price of coal drops. China senses a quick way to improve their grid, so builds a bunch of coal plants and then starts using up the coal the west is no longer using. China is the problem here. I don't hear any solutions that will compel them to stop. Any of the CCP's "green" investment is a joke. It's not connected to their grid, and like everything in China is fake and just for show.

[@dylaninnes8541]

@@oldmandoinghighkicksonlyin1368 China carries on with cheap energy and out paces us.... They benefit when the west falters ... Might want to start learning chinese? Carbon taxes are a tax grab look at how much federal and state/prov tax increases as it is applied after the carbon tax so the truth is that it is a tax grab The Californian wild fires are due to poor land management they've started doing controlled burns and trimming trees away from power lines look it up. Deaths from "climate disasters" have steadily declined over the last century. Coal was created all at the same time all over the world from trees before bacteria was able to break down lignins ... So at one time all that carbon was around in the atmosphere... Last time I checked plants like CO2. If we assume that the temperature is increasing we might be really glad it is if a few volcanoes go off and reduce the temperature by blasting debris into the atmosphere. I would invite people to look up "climate discussion nexus" great channel on the climate Doom and gloom

[@user-zn4pw5nk2v]

@@oldmandoinghighkicksonlyin1368 That is why the tax shouldn't be on the coal plant but on the coal mining company, 1t of coal having lets say a billion carbon atoms is going to produce 1 billion CO2 molecules ~3t with a 6 to 8 ratio on the error (C=6 (atomic weight) (1/6)*(1+2*8) being the exact value in tones assuming coal is pure Carbon (see molecular weight for exact values, if you don't believe)) same for methane and heavier fuels, count carbon molecules and you get the exact amount of CO2(and water) produced in pure burn. Tax that, it's not that hard, the higher efficiency fuels will effectively get lower tax. Solar getting none.(and producing methane will be taxed the same as producing methane and burning it for power (lowering the green house effect (methane IS a more potent green house gas)) with the money fund electrical producers per KW produced, incentivising not lowering the power production. Most effective power producers win under free market rules with this tax. And if you produce plastic, well hey you also get taxed(indirectly), because carbon is carbon it will get degraded and turned to CO2 in the dump, only tax cut being recycling your own plastic/carbon(the one the company produced) you used CC tech and captured 1t of carbon in to coal here get a 1t bond, you captured it in water, you get none, since it still is unusable, but now you can sell it to a more inovative company that will make coal out of it and get that same 1t bond. (This will not fix the worse green house gasses, but it will stop cheating the system by capturing the dirtiest gasses (after producing them on purpose) and trading them for CO2 under carbon trading(and then releasing CO2 as much as you want)). But it also wouldn't stop the monopoly from bullying renewables out of market, so that they get said power bonds. And yes, the tax should also apply to cutting trees. Yes, in the age of the dinoes there was life, lush jungle (400m) forests (where we now have cities and corn), high humidity, temperatures of 40-45°C(~120°F) average in winter and 6m higher sea level, and people were (rats) in burrows under the earth at 10cm high and having 2 brain cells. You may wish that time back, i don't!

[@user-zn4pw5nk2v]

@@dylaninnes8541 that is what every country is saying and is why the green deal is not working, the same thing as the cold war, every side thinks the other will attack it, and we end up with nuclear arsenal, enough to flatten earth 10 times over, the same thing is happening with carbon, why care, when no-one does, and that is the reason no-one does. If you think china is such a big deal, why don't embargo it ??? . if no one is willing to trade with a dirty old china, china will have to oblige and up their game, if the US didn't back down from the paris agreement due to big oil, Russia wouldn't have either, and China will end up with no outside capital and go either "US introvert isolationist" lowering the electricity export and therefore lowering carbon emissions or lowering carbon emissions due to higher efficiency, or CC.

[@user-zn4pw5nk2v]

Mr free. I don't share your point of view, there was (basically) no mention on heavier green house gasses(and their trading), There was a french film about the carbon mafia, how you can trade basically micrograms of sulphur gasses for a ton of carbon dioxide, and how a company can produce sulphur with tones capture (some of) it use it for whatever, and make income from 3 different sources the company they are selling the product to, the company who is buying their carbon share and giving them money, and also getting subsidy for green energy from the government (it wasn't exactly sulphur, but just as nasty) The problem is no one is doing their job (in the whole chain) as intended (but only chasing money, we need 3-5 idealists to bring everything back to function), otherwise there wouldn't be an issue with any of this. Same stuff with corruption really, when enough everyday citizens stop bribing cops there wouldn't be a problem, if cops stop taking bribes - same, if you don't purchase a cellphone every year, there wouldn't be a cobalt mine in africa using child labour. Everyone is just as involved in living their lives, as easy as possible, and not care that their neighbours house is burning thanks to their tv being hotwired improperly (or something like that). Laws are useful only when everyone believes and abides by them, otherwise what is the point of it all.

[@MadMadCommando]

It's strange that even in the high tax scenario, nuclear fission and hydro generation don't rise. I think this is from the model assuming a totally free market electrical grid, since it's governments that build nuclear and hydro, not companies. A major oversite in my opinion, since the model predicts a huge increase in solar and wind driven by free market forces, but that would require massive energy storage solutions that use technologies that simply doesn't exist yet.

[@Sekir80]

Yet. Interesting, you pick a point on future related study that does not yet exist. Interesting you pick this one instead, say, carbon capture. I'm probably more of an optimist than most people or maybe I just believe very unlikely pipe dreams, but here you go everyone: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bKvKqJyHa6eigqM

[@tjs200]

I think as far as hydro goes, in the US we've kind of reached saturation, as in most of the potential hydro resources of the country have been tapped. There may be some marginal amounts in small tributaries and such that could be tapped, but most rivers in the US have been damned in multiple locations, and the remaining free flowing rivers are protected under the WSR act and legally their flow cannot be altered for conservation/ecological reasons.

[@Qpaification]

Exactly, really weird!

[@henryjanicky4978]

Emergency climate and the only solution to it is renovable plus taxes is ' pipe dreaming '

[@MadMadCommando]

@@Sekir80 I watched the video. Firstly, according to the video, in order to create the robust system it states, renewables must overproduce electricity by a factor of 4, and be able to store that power. I'm skeptical that that level of overproduction is desirable. Secondly, It does not assume exponential grown in electricity demand, which will happen with increased electrification for climate change purposes. Lastly, I think it overemphasizes how durable lithium ion batteries on during those cold cloudy windless winter days that come with massive increases in energy consumption. Not only do LI batteries degrade in the cold, not having a suitable backup for the extreme weather we'll experience with more climate change will cause deaths like we've seen in Texas. A diversified energy portfolio is desirable

[@maxon1672]

I shiver at the assumptions made to build an economic model that complex at that scale. Very interesting video.

[@somedude0921]

Imagine the supercomputer needed to run it

[@bpj1805]

@yo yo The Sun might be intermittent but solar power doesn't need to be. You can store days, weeks, or even months' worth of thermal energy, captured in concentrating solar collectors, in big tanks of molten salt. The size of these tanks is merely an engineering tradeoff, not a "problem" that fundamentally can't be solved.

[@elektrotehnik94]

These analyses are too simplistic & dumb to give good data on 20-30 year time horizons. They are ignoring a big chunk of the new innovations that will benefit us over the years (impossible to accurately predict, especially if you're not knee-deep in the industry), but also ignoring all the unintended unplanned troubles that inherently flawed carbon tax policies will bring to the table. Furthermore, politics produces flawed systems, especially from the start, especially when they are this mind-blowingly complex, warning us against rushing with bling confidence into changing systems we don't really know how they'll react. I'm the guy that loyalty donated to the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement protests. I had skin in the game for a long time & have done my reading. I'm far from being a climate sceptic ^^

[@npip99]

It really doesn't have to be that complex. There are only 4-5 major ways to produce energy, and the cost + time needed to construct new solar energy farms, and new wind farms, is very well known. So, it's really not hard to make a model that will simulate shutting coal plants down when their profit margins are negative, and to make the model create solar / wind energy when their profit margins are positive (With them only appearing on the electric grid, after the known construction time)

[@gorkyd7912]

​@@npip99 No... every single power plant is a new way to produce energy. Every single power plant operates at a different efficiency level, took a different amount of time to create, has a different working life, and will be effected differently by unpredictable future events like tsunamis, earthquakes, drought, forest fires, wars, financial changes, etc. What you're actually saying: it's not hard to make a model based on assumptions that gives you the conclusions you want to see. This is what all climate change-based models are. They are produced to shift public opinion, the "science" is a veneer. If you assume X then Y. If you go back to the year 2000 they were modeling a future based on replacing coal plants with renewable biomass and hydrogen. 10 years later fracking and natural gas are replacing coal, reducing emissions, and both biomass and hydrogen are considered dead-end innovations. So what good was that modeling?

[@kerryb2689]

The indirect cost of the carbon tax will also be on everyone - affecting low income more. meaning Increased fuel cost for transportation will cause inflation in food and everything, which is passed on to the consumer.

[@Baseenough]

Yeah a better way to solve the world’s problems is to not have a free economy. I’m tired of these complicated routers we have to take to keep trillionaires trillionaires. Problems is 1% of the population owns 50% of the worlds money and they do it by polluting and raising prices on everything but not handing raises out unless the government forces them

[@roflchopter11]

12:48 it's funny because the VW emissions cheat resulted in vehicles that consume less fuel and emit less CO2 (but more NOx)

[@sebi0037]

Ye, but they just needed to cloak a major transaction from Germany to the US, since VW is state owned by 50%.

[@mattr8750]

Yeah and if you count the addition to the millions of people killed a year by air pollution, that even more in emission reduction! After all higher population is the worst thing for emissions right now.

[@MrSuperpimmel]

@@sebi0037 it's actually about 12% by lower Saxony and 15% by Qatar

[@RTGROY]

It's also funny because nitrous oxide is far worse as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide!!

[@kenos911]

@@mattr8750 the study doesn’t seem to find people weakened by air pollution. Do those count as deaths? What is the limit for what is considered an air pollution death

[@jacobs.macauley4420]

What’s extremely interesting is Carbon Taxes have been in use in British Columbia since 2008. The government when it introduced the carbon tax did 4 other things to reduce the tax burden of the new tax. 1) It sent everyone in the province a rebate check of a couple hundred dollars 2) Lowered higher marginal personal tax rates 3) Lowered corporate tax rates 4) For lower income households you receive a rebate check from the government if you make below a certain amount of income you receive a couple hundred dollars per quarter this rebate reduces the burden of the carbon tax plus sales taxes which tend to regressive taxes for poorer households. I found it interesting that the authors assumed that increasing the carbon tax rates would occur consistently. In BC the carbon rose from $10 in 2008 to $25 in 2012 and remained unchanged for 5 years then in 2017 with a change of government the tax rate is approaching $50 in the next year or so. This is one of the issues of a carbon tax if it doesn’t increase to keep up with inflation it losses it’s effectiveness. Thereby increasing it plus adjusting it for inflation increases the effectiveness of it overtime.

[@DotADBX]

Carbon taxes honestly haven't changed how the average person consumes carbon producing products it has just increased the costs of said products. Personally I feel theres a better way that costs less for the consumer rather then for the producer.

[@myname686]

Reduction of carbon tax burden defies the original purpose. That's unfortunate.

[@DotADBX]

@@derSalad the Canadian conservatives had a new approach which seemed to be interesting during the last election hard to say if would have worked any better. Personally I think most governments look at carbon taxes as the end all be all when in reality carbon capture is clearly the best course of action and as far as I can tell both governments and companies are taking their sweet ass time with that, my guess is because carbon capture would not only increase cost for consumers at home but would increase cost on exports making it less viable in the global market where I believe in a lot of cases exported carbon producing products probably find away around carbon taxes to keep it competitive. Above all that the issue isn't really western countries we already do a lot to make everything as green as possible its developing countries and places such as China and Russia that put more shit in the air then the entire west combined and we have little to no control over that even if we did manage to go full green on our side which frankly is unlikely to occur. Ideally and I think everyone agrees on this is we are kinda done with coal for energy production (it will still be needed for steal production) but a lot of western countries have done imo a shit job of providing a viable exit strategy for both coal mining company's and their employees simply shutting the doors all a sudden is a really bad idea as we saw when Obama did exactly that we need to provide not only training for these people to convert to new industries but we need to properly clean up these mine sites and if need be (id rather we didnt) provide significant financial incentives to coal mining companies to either shut down and move on to a different mine material or get them to move into a new business sector and take their employees with them.

[@timm8900]

The direct tax system seems to be easier to implement and control than the cap and trade systems. The cap and trade systems have been subject to all types of games. The biggest drawback of the tax system like BC implemented is that many industries that pay the tax must complete with imported goods that pay no tax. Notably, I do not believe any steel mills remain in BC and the tax on the few cement plants had to be reduced significantly to prevent their shutdown.

[@adrianthoroughgood1191]

@@timm8900 you need a system of carbon border taxes as well to keep the playing field level so imports don't get an unfair advantage.

[@johnfausett3335]

It's difficult to calculate the effects of an imaginary force. Its effect on humanity depends upon how well it's sold, and it's been a hard sell everywhere on earth that has access to mass media. The COVID hysteria was taken from the same playbook and uses the same scare tactics. The coach knows that this play always produces a touchdown.

[@deantimm2322]

Here in Canada, they charged us a carbon tax they are talking $200a ton in the future but so far give no tax to the corporations that produce massive carbon emissions

[@ataraxiadreaming]

It's weird that Nuclear power plants put out less radiation than coal plants. Look up fly ash production in coal plants.

[@BrianFrichette]

Dude this was an excellent and informative production. Not dry or tedious at all, IMO. Thanks

[@tomo1168]

I agree with you, not dry at all. The channel "Just have a think" has similar videos with datas and graphs about climate change and solutions: kzbin.info/door/RBwLPbXGsI2cJe9W1zfSjQ

[@klaudelu18]

Same. I am going to add my name to the "This video was not dry or tedious at all" group. Real Engineering will do what they think is best with these statistics. From my end, please, more videos of this ilk.

[@crocodile2006]

Where are natural disasters occurring more often? And when the weather is good, does that mean Climate Change didn't happen that day?

[@colin-campbell]

The BTU bit was a bit tedious/pretentious.

[@VeggiePower303]

This video is a complete lie. There is no man made Global warming. CO2 is NOT a pollutant, it is a plant food. Farmers pump 2000ppm CO2 into their green-houses to increase food production by double. Because we only have 400ppm in the air. We need to burn more fossil fuels (cleanly) to increase the level of CO2 Globally. It will NOT create Global warming, because the water vapor will compensate easily. In Earth's history there have been levels of CO2 over 8000ppm. End the plants were thriving more then today. Everything was growing huge. Imagine apples as big as your head. There is no food shortage if we increase the level of CO2 in the air to even ten times of what it is today. CO2 makes the Earth Greener. kzbin.info?search_query=co2++earth+green

[@superhero092008]

As someone who worked in the energy industry, I can say that a huge advantage of the carbon tax is that is allows energy companies to add the costs of progressive carbon taxes into their capital spending plans in a very rational fashion. Some energy companies have been asking for carbon taxes for two decades for exactly this reason but the taxes have been politically impossible. Other methods to reduce emissions, such as random permitting denials on proposed projects, leads to uncertainty in project economics and inefficiencies in the overall economy. My experience with the EU cap and trade was that energy savings projects very rapidly killed the market price of CO2 emissions leading to reduced incentives but there may be better implementations elsewhere. We just need to shit or get off the pot on this. Time is running out for our children.

[@b_vtt8726]

Hi, could you elaborate how energy savings projects killed the market price of co2 in the eu? From what I read it has been a hugely successful emission cutting program. The problem seems to be that not all types of emissions are covered (like mobility or heating) and that there are lots of redundant efforts to decrease emissions misdirecting resources to ineffective forms of energy production (like the Renewable Energy Act in Germany).

[@superhero092008]

@@b_vtt8726 My only experience is on industrial credits. After issuance, a lot companies implemented energy savings projects to achieve the programs goals (good as you noted). But that killed the market for the credits because companies no longer needed the credits and couldn't sell them to somebody who did and the market value of those credits drastically decreased. So, companies no longer had incentives to invest in projects for the value of the credits - only the underlying value of the energy saving projects. On the other hand, a progressively increasing tax would be self sustaining.

[@b_vtt8726]

@@superhero092008 Were companies exempted from the duty to purchase certificates in order to emit carbon if they implemented energy saving programs? Or did they implement the programs to save costs because they anticipated a higher price for certificates and thereby made it drop? If that were the case, I think that what was happening might have reduced efficiency of the cap and trade system but not its effectiveness. Once there is a cap, there is no way to emit more than the amount initially agreed upon (the cap). If prices drop because everybody is saving anyways, they might decide to emit carbon later but still can not exceed the agreed upon amount. Thanks for your answer by the way!

[@superhero092008]

​@@b_vtt8726 Good question - you are in the right place with your statement, but the fact is it does not provide incentives to drive continuous reduction (as implemented). A continuously decreasing cap would drive effectiveness and efficiency, but that is not what I dealt with. We need to front load carbon removal now because it will be easier and faster than the last bits of carbon. In all projects in my experience, you can influence end outcomes much, much more effectively at the beginning than 80% of the way through. I was not involved in the initial launch period, but my understanding is that credits were based on current emissions which forced companies to implement projects or buy credits to meet a cap value (not price growth of the credit, per se). Any expansion of a business/emissions was under that initial cap and you had to reduce energy intensity or buy credits to grow. In my experience - lack of growth opportunity got business leaders thinking more than day to day economics, but in a 'dead' industry with no growth, I could see the opposite reasoning. If the price of the credits drop because the 'good guys' or the 'smart guys' invested more, you could buy cheap credits and grow and not invest in CO2 savings projects which is not the desired outcome. If the credit price were guaranteed to have risen over time like a progressive tax, you are forced into action in a very systematic way. If you want to do energy projects and the credit price drops, you have made a mistake from the shareholder POV. On the other hand, with a tax, you know the price now and in the future and can make a much better, and more aggressive, decision to invest in more technology up front. A progressive tax on emissions, implemented world wide, is the only way forward. I'll note that the first 20 big economies matter way more and the last 180-190, so world wide if subject to interpretation. Side note - CCS is interesting, but I just don't see it working at scale outside of places that have a significant opportunity to sequester carbon. Of course if the magic catalyst/enzyme is invented that can convert CO2 to something that sequesters it easily or reuses it, we are in a new game.

[@b_vtt8726]

@@superhero092008 Thank you for your answer! I agree with you on two points: 1. The price of emission certificates must rise in a foreseeable manner. 2. A worldwide Carbon Tax would be a very good approach compared to the approaches now taken. What I disagree on (and this might stem from my limited knowledge on how cap and trade was implemented) is your argument that cap and trade can not provide stable forecasting.I understand that there is uncertainty as to the exact price of emission certificates and therefore any saving project is in danger to be uneconomical if prices drop. But eliminating that uncertainty also means leaving many on the table: what if there is a new way of capturing carbon and therefore certificates become much cheaper? You would want the price to reflect that new reality. In Germany the Green Party is against a cap and trade solution because they fear that savings in one place would facilitate emissions in another place (emissions in mobility will not sink fast enough). I think that is exactly the point of the cap and trade approach: There is a limited amount of tons of carbon that can be emitted. If it is cheaper to save in one place than in another, it is the desired outcome that it is saved in the former not in the latter. Where it is more expensive to not use fossil fuels you should use them until certificates run out. There is another point regarding price stability: If there is a limited amount of carbon that can be emitted for the rest of human existence and states sell certificates in exactly that amount, their price should rise more or less in lockstep with the interest rate. If it were to rise faster, that would incentivize the burning of coal now (a price drop in fossil fuels). That's why I am somewhat critical of the tax approach, which might cause such a price drop, since people who own fossil fuel reserves naturally want to sell it all. If they see that it will be more difficult to sell in a year from now, they will rush to sell everything now. Also I think the cap and trade solution is easier to implement internationally, since countries can then trade their emission rights between them (wich would make for a huge economical advantage). you would not have to model how much carbon will be emitted for a certain tax rate since the amount of editable carbon would be fix. you would not have to deal with different tax systems in different nations, which would make estimating their effectiveness difficult. In the end I would gladly take the carbon tax as an approach far superior to most things done today. However I think there is much to be said for the often criticized cap and trade approach too.

[@gijsbertebbers2310]

Very good video, and I laughed so hard at your BTU-GJ conversion. I'd like to see a video on the necessary changes in everyday technology as a result of such carbon taxes! How would this influence our way of living?

[@ri-oj1ul]

I notice nuclear energy remains constant over the following decades. How reasonable is this assumption given that we are not building nuclear plants and are shutting down the ones that are getting old in some cases? Also I see the future sees us relying on about 40% wind power... are we assuming we find ways to store the energy generated or maybe that it gets consistently more windy?

[@bobbybrown1258]

Storage isn't the full story. Interconnetors help us transport energy to where it is needed. Eg. The new Interconnecter between Norway and UK. When windy in UK electricity yo Norway. When it isn't Norway, hydro back to UK. This is cheaper than storage There may be a renaissance in nuclear as new technologies arrive that are even better than what we have today. Check out small modular nuclear reactors and the terrapower design as examples.

[@ri-oj1ul]

@@bobbybrown1258 Thanks for clarifying!

[@subashchandra9557]

@@bobbybrown1258 SMR's will never by commercially viable simply due to the nuclear proliferation problems.

[@angrydoge1331]

@@subashchandra9557 which is sad because nuclear has one the highest energy density and one of the safest designs.

[@bobbybrown1258]

@@subashchandra9557 I've made comments on this on another thread and I've been attacked by nuclear shills lol. But It might be viable

[@gregormarethel2956]

Real Engineering: A direct tax on fuels is impossible to cheat. Corporations Everywhere: Challenge Accepted!

[@PSNDonutDude]

I think the point is that with auditing and such, while things will slip through, it's much harder to hide the literal amount of fuel being purchased. By simply taxing fuel as it is purchased, it is much easier to track. Let's say I sell gasoline, and you want to buy the gasoline, how would you hide that? You could pay cash, but then where did my gasoline I made or purchased go? This is easily audited and quite simple compared to cap and trade and other systems.

[@mgntstr]

China joins chat. HEY ROUND EYE! Why is your coal so expensive all of a sudden?! Do you guys not need our export? Medical precursors? Computer chips? Look, either you let us buy coal cheaply or we halt exports you depend on.

[@speedingoffence]

Nah, the general consensus is that literally nothing is bad for the environment unless it's CO2. Power producers will just switch to products that produce 'clean' emissions like sulfur dioxide, lead oxide, hydrochloride...

[@kenos911]

@@speedingoffence or just anything at a lower cost

[@kriscerosaurus]

I know it's not the point of the video, but...even years later, just hearing "Hurricane Harvey" spoken aloud gives me chills. Five feet of rain in less than a week. I'll never forget watching that bastard just sitting on us day after day on radar. We're still finding random items on our property from all across our end of the county.

[@elijahharrison4164]

Here to reaffirm what seems the dominant sentiment: Excellent video, your clean energy/future of energy series is not only what brought me to your channel, it made made subscriber, and booster of your content. Please do not hesitate to make more content like this, you have a dedicated and extraordinarily appreciative audience that will follow you into and through the arcana, and enjoy the ride!

[@tankart3645]

"Yeeted from the electric grid" 😂 that was nice.

[@Maniac3020]

Governments are often reluctant to lower taxes, so I'm not expecting the tax swap to work as advertised.

[@d_dave7200]

You have it backwards. Governments are reluctant to increase taxes. Taxes have been consistently going down in the US, especially on the wealthy and corporations for at least 40 years. Tax cuts are much easier to pass politically than tax increases with our current system.

[@gorkyd7912]

@@d_dave7200 You have no understanding of history. In 1913 the tax rate in the US was 1%. The only thing that drove down taxes in the US was globalization; people leaving the US because they didn't want to pay the 70% tax rate.

[@shahabmos5130]

"When technical engineering fails you can always revert back to social engineering ." Sun bezos. You cannot increase supply , go cut demand .

[@Pluckaiy]

In sweden we have something called bonus malus, which means petrol and diesel are taxed alot, but electric and hybrids are given bonus like money for being electric, this means the people who can afford electric are getting all the benefit like you said.

[@vizender]

Yes, in France we have it to… 6000€ for people to switch to electric. The problem is that mostly richer people can afford electric, even with the bonuses.

[@DeanCalaway]

And in California they are already talking about more taxes on electricity because too many are using electric cars... So we went from even low income families can have a car to only low-mid income families can have a car now we're going to mid-high income families can have a car. Meanwhile the living quality of low income families keeps going down year by year and how long you think it's gonna take from them to round up all these lovely politicians and social engineers to deal away with them?

[@mykeprior3436]

Not to mention the used car market for electric is basically a joke.

[@gorkyd7912]

And when you are sufficiently angered by this they will stop giving the bonuses... and keep the money for themselves.

[@wesjones6370]

Same here in Canada. We do the same for solar panels on the roofs of houses. Yet, as is the case now in winter, they produce only a few short hours of energy, during the lulls, when the grid is overpowered...leading to them bleeding the energy off and not using it, only to allow them to use the coal/natural gas power in the evenings at a reduced cost, which those who can't afford the $15,000+ investment have to pay.

[@thecentalist3160]

I'm still not completely sold on the carbon tax, because the big corporations will pass down the losses to the customer and still heavily profit from the subsidies that they still get from the government.

[@flakgun153]

The expectation is literally throat hey will pass down the tax to the customer. That's the desired outcome. People will use a lot less gas when it's $6/gallon.

[@iain3713]

Even in that case, consumers will shift away from carbon intensive products since they cost more. So corporations will have to reduce carbon emissions in order to stay competitive.

[@tomwantshelp]

The prices SHOULD be passed onto consumers, that’s the whole point. The solution is to pay the revenue out to every individual equally. That way, people will have an incentive to reduce their carbon intensity, but those who release an average amount will not be financially worse off. As poor people tend to have lower carbon footprints, this would be a broadly progressive measure.

[@flakgun153]

Also when people rail against fossil fuel subsidies, those subsidies are usually referring to the taxes not collected, and the ability to depreciate the land against taxes. The former is... Obvious? They're staying the government is subsidizing the industry because it's not taxing them. Lol. The latter is also fucking stupid. Businesses of all shapes and sizes get to to deduct their costs against revenue to determine profits and thus taxes. The land an oil well is on is a cost of doing business, and loses value as you pull fuel out of it.

[@5353Jumper]

Which is why a household rebate was considered. So you experience inflation and higher utility bills, but get a large rebate check from the government every year. I am not on favor of corporate tax breaks and corporate capital gains breaks that were discussed though. These basically just give more money to corporate owners which is only partially reinvested in growth, often just goes to wealth accumulation or out of the country to foreign investor returns. I would be a lot happier with the carbon tax if the money went to domestic infrastructure or household tax rebate/cuts.

[@cursedlycan9925]

5:21 As an engineer I want to shake hands with you like the epic hand shake meme, for refusing to use BTU as a unit. 🤝

[@jenshalford]

Great video! Interesting and well made as always 🙌 thanks for spreading research knowledge in such an easy to digest form

[@sesgel]

most of us dont notice those small easter eggs hidden in there because we are so enthralled with the main content and are already hanging on your every word

[@EDFHLFLFF]

As a person on a course with chemical engineering included, I fully endorse BTU getting ignored

[@anthonyjaccard3694]

BTU?

[@benjaminkogan3529]

@@anthonyjaccard3694 British Thermal Unit?

[@richdobbs6595]

From a pro-metric point of view, I can sympathize with you, but from a practical point of view, I can get a feel for raising a pound of water by one degree fahrenheit, while a joule still seems completely arbitrary. I'd rather use kWH.

[@acceptablecasualty5319]

@@richdobbs6595 You being able to visualize/relate is a result of familiarity, not the units involved. A child raised on Kelvin for temperature is going to use that argument to defend his use of Kelvin.

[@ElectricityTaster]

The queen is not amused by this trend. We are losing out traditional British values!

[@twiggledy5547]

Bravo to the EU for its carbon tax proposal! That exempts..... private jets and yachts..... it's a poor people tax to punish them for the crime of desiring cheap available energy

[@MattyEngland]

Exactly. The money will end up in the pockets of the same POS bankers that already have 99.999% of the worlds money.

[@weasle2904]

EU and the UN used to be unique in their ability to solve problems. Now they can't seem to stop making problems, and we all know how horridly corrupt these politicians are.

[@ironbolt2678]

Well, private jets and yachts are basically irrelevant in the climate change fight. Yeah, “crime of wanting cheap energy”, any more populist statements? Sure, you may have cheap energy however what’s that worth when you have nothing to eat or suffer other adverse effect of climate change? You will have to spend more to cope with that… and no one even said that cheap energy is cheap for the consumer. I don’t think green energy in 30 years time will be any more expensive than coal or natural gas energy would have been… poor people punishment oh no… Poor people will be punished for not caring for the environment because they are not directly affected, or they only think so. The punishment will be done by the environment itself. Rich people will not feel the climate change as much, because they will always have enough energy, food etc. will the poor though?

[@fastestdino2]

Without sounding like the democrat fifth pillar (They're all a bunch of scammers anyways), People just want systems that won't give huge benefits to those who already own far more then their fair share. The fact that many of the most prosperous countries take so long to raise their minimum wages can't be good for a free market that demands the purchase of goods and services.

[@masterpepe3641]

@@ironbolt2678 well if the same oil barons would stop using enough energy to power small cities for their 5 different mansions, 3 private jets, 2 yachts, 15 private cars, and having 350 people on standby, maybe us plebeians would start to actually pay attention to their moronic ideas. And since when is populism(and individualism) bad? From whats been seen in human history, individualism trumps collectivism in nearly every facet of life, and while 100% individualism leads to major problems(such as during feudal times), 100% collectivism doesn’t have those problems because it collapses before it ever reaches that point. Also on the idea that poor people don’t care about the environment(hint: no one gives a fuck about it, doesn’t matter if they are rich or poor), are you really going to ignore the people who use *private jets* rather than flying economical yet punish regular people for continuing their own existence with heating and transport for work? And although i doubt the Earth will become Tatooine as the doomsayers screech, environmental factors will be felt by all(rich included)

[@cataphracts123]

Thank you for this. As someone interested in policy crafting, I find stuff like this immensely useful.

[@langohr9613ify]

When I was intern at companys, the switch to sustainable technology was always calculated in terms of carbon tax. This applys to the switch to Hydrogen Planes, as it does to Wind turbines or cars.

[@PhukYouTube]

Where is the "Real Engineering" I love to watch? This is just Real Propaganda". BTW, electric cars run on coal.

[@AKaktusA]

@@PhukKZbin he is presenting the results from a MIT study...

[@PhukYouTube]

@@AKaktusA Oh you're precious. Universities don't produce propaganda ?

[@sadenuttie2234]

@@PhukKZbin electric cars run on solar panels if the owner of the car is smart, even with the added Co2 produced in production, and in a country with 100% of its energy produced from coal power stations, it is still produces less than 70% Co2 in its lifecycle in comparison to ICE cars so misinformed josh, disappointed, thought that the average intelligence and knowledge on a topic like this would be greater of a regular viewer on this channel

[@joeneu]

Wind turbines don't net any energy much like making fuel from corn or other crops at the moment.

[@jerrymiller9039]

The tax estimate assumes no reduction in coal use. If the tax is on coal use it would drop to zero revenue as coal use drops to zero. Instead the graph shows tax revenue growing over time not shrinking

[@fanban2926]

Exactly my thought lmao

[@shreedas5560]

Wait lol you're right

[@gorkyd7912]

No you're doing it wrong. There will be unlimited tax money but the economy will be great, the ice caps will grow back, the polar bears will be fat, and the air will be so clean that people will live to 200 years old and be smart enough to solve all the earth's problems.

[@karlmoore1837]

Thanks for the work in making this video. I had no idea a study like this was conducted. If possible could we see a follow up on how transferrable/applicable the models used would be to places like the UK and EU?

[@Chris-qp3nj]

yes pls

[@---uf2zl]

They made a simulation for Belgium, which showed that a carbon tax + lump sum redistribution to households would even increase gdp growth by about 0.1%

[@thilotherz9300]

That would be my answer too. I suggest you look for similar studies made from the countries in question. That makes more sense than your approach.

[@AgneDei]

In EU this already happens, we get little CO2 reductions so far, huge investments, absurd energy and fuel prices (many times higher than the CO2 tax), roaring inflation, and generally getting most people poorer, fast. Taxing never solved anything, and such simulations are absurd. If the emission reduction is the point then switching mainly from coal to gas will never reduce CO2 emissions by 90%, that just doesn't add up. Even if we add lots of unstable and unreliable renewables(no offence, that's just how wind works) it will still be very difficult to get any lower than 30-40% of current CO2 emissions with this approach, and that's assuming that we would not increase energy usage globally, which is obviously absurd considering huge developing countries in Africa and Asia just starting to really get electrified, and in the wealthy countries with the push towards electric cars etc. It's obvious that electricity usage globally will get higher and higher, fast. For this reason we need lots of affordable, zero emission, stable power sources. What would make sense here would be to bank on new nuclear power plants (and in future, 4tg gen nuclear and later on fusion), not on gas and wind turbines. Those don't solve the CO2 problem z the pollution problem, don't provide a prospect od reasonable energy prices (if we're supposed to go forward as a civilization, and go electric everywhere, then it stands to reason, that the electricity prices must go down in the future, not up, this seems obvious), and depend wholy on principle of federal redistribution of funds, which is the building block of socialism, it never worked, and is always ridiculously inefficient with the taxpayer money. It's not really surprising that a so called "scientific paper" from to US. universities would completely ignore all the historical, and economical knowledge of the world z just to prove a fake point. Also to make it clear, renewables are okay as an addition to the grid, but as a base for the power grid they are an obvious disaster, as they require huge overhead in power lines capacity (as you need hugely overpowered wind generation capability, to on average get decent power levels), very costly backup generation plants that have to be maintained for money, and they don't make any if the wind is blowing in this scenario, and the huge constant servicing, maintenance and replacement costs that occur when you have a huge amount of wind turbines making power over tens of years. This is not a problem with conventional and nuclear power plants as they are enclosed in sturdy buildings to be isolated from the elements, while wind and solar power plants have to take the storms, hail, erosion etc. head on, so they just must have a relatively low lifespan, at least on some major parts of those devices. Still it doesn't mean they're bad, they just don't accomplish the most basic requirements of an electric grid power source, which is the ability to generate energy in a stable, constant and predictable manner, where the operator decides how much power the power plant will produce, not the wind or the time of day.

[@VeggiePower303]

This video is a complete lie. There is no man made Global warming. CO2 is NOT a pollutant, it is a plant food. Farmers pump 2000ppm CO2 into their green-houses to increase food production by double. Because we only have 400ppm in the air. We need to burn more fossil fuels (cleanly) to increase the level of CO2 Globally. It will NOT create Global warming, because the water vapor will compensate easily. In Earth's history there have been levels of CO2 over 8000ppm. End the plants were thriving more then today. Everything was growing huge. Imagine apples as big as your head. There is no food shortage if we increase the level of CO2 in the air to even ten times of what it is today. CO2 makes the Earth Greener. kzbin.info?search_query=co2++earth+green

[@mancavestudios8955]

Planet: "We need fewer cars!" Automakers: "The best I can do is more cars."

[@rando5673]

I live in an area with a carbon tax, and it's useless. This doesn't work in a cold weather climate. The demand for heating your home stays constant. People can't simply choose not to when it regularly hits -35°C. Biking and walking to work are also not options in that weather, and waiting 30 minutes for the bus in weather that cold doesn't work either so cars are a must for many people. The price of food and other household goods increases because transportation costs are higher. A mother can't simply choose not to feed her baby and use fewer diapers, and cat owners still need litter and kibble. A carbon tax doesn't reduce demand, it simply punishes the working and lower middle classes for the crime of not being rich enough

[@DeanCalaway]

That is by design, carbon tax was made to leave you penniless and dependant on government food stamps, nothing more. So it is working as intended.

[@bouldershoulder523]

Actually loved the in depth dive, I would have never come across this information otherwise please keep doing what you are doing.

[@_yonas]

One of the parties in the new German government proposed to simply redistribute the money from a carbon tax on e.g. fuels equally among all tax payers (Bürgergeld, proposed by the Green party). This leads to the simple situation where everyone who uses less than the average person gets basically more than they paid in. I think this could be one of the fairest ways to redistribute money leaving very little room to cheat the system.

[@MatthewMakesAU]

What? An actual sensible economic policy coming from the Greens? That's incredible! That is literally the best way to do it

[@meyertheau1781]

Wouldn't it subsidize people living in city, where you usually travel with more eco-friendly means of transportation, and you are likely to earn more, and be detrimental to rural areas where revenu tends to be lower but you absolutely need a car for commodities? It looks unfair from the outside

[@Sibula]

@@meyertheau1781 That, plus I doubt it fixes GDP nearly as well as capital tax reductions

[@prophetsspaceengineering2913]

@@meyertheau1781 It would. I don't see a way around this though. The rural lifestyle has a disproportionately large impact per person. It sucks and it's unfair but in the current situation, half-measures seem like a really bad idea.

[@ShadowebEB]

Germany needs to get back on the Nuclear train if they want to be serious about lowering their carbon emissions.

[@martinwessely3000]

honestly one of my favorite videos on this channel so far great job! Love what your doing

[@jordan00191]

Only thing I can see you missed, is taking coal completely away reduces the demand significantly and countries like Australia where coal mining is a large part of its GDP, it will have a very large and sudden effect that may not be reversible

[@viermidebutura]

The whole video ignores the human aspect, make wild assumptions (new form of energy by 2040) violates thermodynamics (carbon capture on termoplants)

[@thedayb4tomorrow]

"that will save us millions of dollars in the long run from reducing the impact of climate change on our planet" "Millions" probably being the understatement of the century... 🙂 Also thank you for staying strong and refusing to use idiotic units of measurement 🙂

[@jasonreed7522]

Most of the imperial units are tolerable, at least if you are used to them, or look into their origins. And the big offenders are usually mechanical engineering units but even they are atleast workable. But then there are the climate scientists who i swear are trying to be nonsensical. Take the "metric tonne" it is 1000kg, or 10^3 × 10^3 g = 10^6 g = 1 Megagram or 1Mg. And worse the mmt or million metric tons being 10^6 Mg = 1 Terra gram or 1Tg. Maybe its because I'm an electrical engineer so I'm used to using the higher prefixes for things like Megavolts or Terrawatt-hours, but I can't stand inventing new units when there are already prefixes of the existing base unit with the exact same value. I also get really annoyed when people use unts of energy are units of power, like when furnaces get rated in terms of BTU. Thats x matches burned worth of energy, thats like saying you water pump moves 18L. It is missing the time component, is it 18L per second or per century. Tldr; i hated the units used by climate scientists when i took a course on climate science because they used crap like million metric tonnes and not the already existing and correct Terragram built into SI units. And mixing imperial and SI is just so much worse than pure imperial like some of my thermodynamics problems.

[@angelic8632002]

More like trillions if we look at it globally. And that's not even accounting for the losses we will have that can't be fixed by just throwing more resources at the problem. Collapsed ecosystems are devastating and permanent.

[@devindykstra]

My fear is that the Carbon tax will be implemented without reducing any other taxes. Historically that's what has happened.

[@wiggidymig1335]

We just print more money to pay the taxes... thats whats gonna happen. were fucked...anyway

[@RacingHardTV]

This. Especially with all the loopholes the companies will lobby into the carbon tax to shift all the burden onto the small man/businesses alone.

[@miinyoo]

It's not a fear. It's a certainty and it will rise and fall with the politics that come with it. It will be used as a weapon commercially. Taxation is possibly the dumbest way to implement incentives to reduce carbon footprint. You will all regret it in 20 years.

[@thetruthyes]

@@miinyoo also most of the electricity runs on fossil fuels, so building electric cars to say you're driving green is just another illusion/lie.

[@AKaktusA]

Love it! "modeling" the society is suuuper interesting. Would love 10 more videos from other research groups as well.

[@vx8952]

I am so grateful you made this video, I love seeing how different methods are effective in recusing pollution or other issues. Please keep making these video types. I love it!!!

[@climatecraze]

Pollution and CO2 are different. Less pollution and more CO2 is needed ... kzbin.info/www/bejne/d5jHfYGbr5eGfLc

[@verylongtrain]

This is always how it's laid out... Natural gas as half as bad from coal, from an emissions standpoint. And it's completely wrong. It's actually the other way around. While it's cleaner when burned, there are no leaky pipelines spewing coal constantly... as much as 7-10% of natural gas is lost to leaks, etc, and it's a WAY more potent GHG. We need to get rid of coal, yes... but not by replacing it with NG. We also need to remove gas lines in cities that spew NG constantly, and instead move do electric stoves and heat pump heating. Yay for cabon tax, though :)

[@jimmyryan5880]

Found the lobbyist

[@verylongtrain]

@@jimmyryan5880 Me? Haha... I suppose I'm lobbying for a better, more resilient, and greener grid, yes. With all the might of a few KZbin comments 🙂

[@Croz89]

I think the hardest thing to forecast in these models is the future capital and operational costs of different kinds of energy generation. I don't know what these models used, but I would assume they are either assuming the costs are the same in the future as they are now, or are using some kind of forecast model that may not be terribly accurate. In all the scenarios nuclear remains pretty flat or grows only slightly, but it's possible it could grow a lot more if SMR or Generation IV technology slashes costs and construction time, or the opposite, new plants become so expensive to construct that it shrinks down to nothing as reactors reach the end of their lives. Even with the more understood areas of renewables and gas, there still a lot of uncertainty. Cheaper storage would allow for more renewables in the mix, but if it remains expensive (which is possible, for example a shortage of lithium ore would probably make lithium battery grid storage economically unviable), then gas will stick around for longer as the backup for their intermittency. There's also the question of quite how expensive CCS will be at scale.

[@garethbaus5471]

The Lazard LCOE numbers are a decent estimate of the long term costs of genorating that energy, which is something that is pretty much fixed for renewables and nuclear once the turbines, panels, and power plants are built(fossil fuels are more sensitive to changes in fuel prices so they are less predictable). The value of electricity as well as the cost and amount of storage will obviously change over the years, but a mix of wind and solar isn't likely to get significantly less economically viable until a mix of the 2 is genorating over 50% of the energy in a major grid, past that point energy storage would be absolutely crucial to maintaining a functioning grid rather than just stabilizing energy prices slightly.

[@Croz89]

@@garethbaus5471 For renewables (other than hydro) it really depends on what is available to service their intermittency, and how much it costs both in fixed costs and variable costs. We could assume slow progress with storage and imagine gas doing most of the heavy lifting well into the 2050's, or we can assume rapid progress with storage, and gas becoming less necessary more quickly. These won't necessarily tie in with the amount of carbon tax, it just depends on how well the research goes, what is viable outside the lab and what isn't. It also may depend on the availability of certain ores like lithium, and the number of mines people are willing to open. Renewables can also be constrained by a grid that isn't flexible enough to absorb their varying generation. Solar in particular can swamp the grid around midday, which could means panels would need to be disconnected, same with wind power if there's a strong breeze. That will obviously impact their capacity factor, and therefore their cost per kWh.

[@garethbaus5471]

@@Croz89 I was accounting for those factors when making the estimate of a maximum of roughly 50%, because the future cost of storage currently is still uncertain and past that point we really couldn't feasibly rely on natural gas peaking as a cost effective way to stabilize the grid.

[@Croz89]

@@garethbaus5471 I think that estimate will really depend on local geography, climate and current energy mix. 50% would probably be more than manageable in some places, but difficult to achieve in others, particularly those with poor access to gas and highly seasonal supply and demand.

[@garethbaus5471]

@@Croz89 I was talking about total genoration over large grids like the entire western interconnection which would balance out local variations.

[@theomaia1460]

I absolutely love this subject, tysm for making high quality videos for free, and the 3d scenes are awesome btw

[@LoisoPondohva]

"A direct tax on emissions is impossible to cheat". Oh you, sweet naive summer child.

[@iivin4233]

If you removed fossil fuel subsidies some companies might switch industries completely and use their leverage to make electric vehicles cheaper, not to mention vastly more efficient electric/hydrogen trains.

[@wilsonsamiano]

You’ll just bankrupt the companies getting subsidies. Manufacturing electric cars is completely different from manufacturing ICE cars.

[@vroomvroom4061]

Electric vehicles would then not be possible dues to the majority of plastics being ethanol would cease production. On top of this coolant used in the heat exchange pump is ethanol based as well

[@kugelblitzingularity304]

Note that this scenario is prolly already accounted in models of that caliber

[@melelconquistador]

or allocate their power to lobby that from happening

[@cristitanase6130]

Who will deliver the energy and from what? Where are the lithium mines? Who will deposit all the eco-waster? Is there any total benefits after 20 years or is just another hoax?

[@richdobbs6595]

From an economic point of view and to counter lobbying opposition, I'd rather have a smaller starting tax and higher rate of increases. Less shock to the economy. Better ability to plan for the transition. It will take some time to build out alternatives. Pushing faster than that can occur smoothly will lead to wasteful short term kludges.

[@chuckygobyebye]

Heck yes. Let's start at a low number but let everyone know that it's going to go up and when so industries can adapt. They're already doing this in the EU. Carbon taxes have been on the table since 1973, before I was born! We should have started then and we'd be OK now with little disruption.

[@northernmetalworker]

@Phix I agree, I'm up in northern Canada, we're the most dependant region in Canada on fuel for heating and logistics. The carbon tax does not help us to reduce our emissions, because there's no technology that is as effective as natural gas and diesel for winter heating, when it's -40 outside.

[@anonymousarmadillo6589]

From an economic point of view, I'd rather have a tax that doesn't fuck poor and middle class in the ass while having exemptions for Billionaire Jet Fuel and Yachtfuel

[@cyberfruit3141]

@Phix As a Canadian who live is Saskatchewan where it consistently gets to -50c, I disagree. Sure the prices go up, but there is a tax rebate so I get paid back the difference in cost. Sure, it's a flat number so some people are hit differently, but my house uses gas and the winters here are opressive. But that's where the money from the tax goes, or at least most of it should go back to the people. The tax is designed to hit the big corps. It is an important peice to the climate puzzle.

[@traniel123456789]

@@northernmetalworker Thats not quite true. Once the tax gets high enough wind energy + heat pumps will become competitive.

[@ymi_yugy3133]

One of the issues with this is that it's difficult to cover certain emission sources, e.g. leaks from fossil gas pipelines, livestock and land use.

[@crassirus]

Thank you for the numbers! We need those to shore up our arguments against incrementalists who insist that the status quo needs to continue. We need to make this less about fear of change and other emotions and more about projections and data.

[@krj15489]

its always amazing to me that increasing the amount of nuclear is never considered in these, only increasing wind/solar....Instead of a tax a subsidy and reorganization of nuclear regulation could see decrease in energy prices and decrease in CO2 emissions combined with continued investment in solar and wind

[@philosopheraristotle4419]

Nuclear will solve this problem, but solving this problem is not the end goal. The end goal is carbon taxes.

[@bucko9423]

Because that might actually solve the problem and then these companies who have invested billions in solar and wind would not get their payout.

[@theoldironqueen8224]

Because Nuclear is about 4-6 times as expensive and that only right now, the difference in price will only increase. Why would you use a high risk technology that in 2050 is like 20 times more expensive and just a liability?

[@ZeteticPhilosopher]

Current nuclear technology is unprofitable-even with a carbon tax. However, that “new technology” could very well be a new generation of nuclear energy plants.

[@bucko9423]

@@theoldironqueen8224Everything of what you just said is false. Per KWh generated, no , nuclear is not more expensive. Over the lifetime of a nuclear reactor, the small cost of fuel offsets the intial large construction size. And renewables do not generate constant energy like a Nuclear does. People will enjoy no power at night from solar. Second, with generation 4 and 5 nuclear is getting cheaper, with Small modular reactor designs currently being pioneered in Canada, nuclear will only get cheaper.

[@karsongrady]

The production quality here is absolutely insane with the blender scenes. Are you using RTX or Quadro GPU's? Thanks for the video. You made an already fascinating subject that much more fascinating.

[@TylerF]

He hires a guy to do the 3D renders

[@mrf4146]

I love this dude priority

[@adamblomberg]

He could be using Nvidia GTX, AMD or CPU. Although AMD doesn't have any equivalent to cuda or optix. But it's soon here and it might even beat Nvidia.

[@MrQuinnlord]

We get it. You use blender.

[@projectjt3149]

Keep in mind he has been working closely with CuriosityStream, so he has quite a lot of resources he can use to create high-quality, concise documentaries like this

[@Lordblow1]

You deffo succeeded in making this interesting. Very similar to some of the best of my professors at the uni when discussing a paper like this.

[@brandonmclaine17]

I do have some grievances here , for one anytime a government taxes it's citizenry almost all of it is never given back to the people it was taken from , a carbon tax I don't believe would work the way you perceive it to . secondly while you're correct that the carbon tax would effect low income households , it would also kill off a lot of jobs because a lot of the coal workers may not have the skillset to switch over to the alternatives mentioned , and then there's the layoffs that would also come from the death of the coal power industry. I don't disagree that we should switch over to green energy in fact I would very much like to see nuclear become the powerhouse of power production specifically fusion because unlike our current fission reactors , it doesn't come with radioactive waste . I still enjoyed the video and while I respect your take and opinion on this subject , I agree what the problem is but disagree with your solution . The us government in particular has a horrible track record on how tax dollars are spent so there's no way in hell I'd trust it no matter which party is in power to do the right thing with it . Oh and yes taxes are bad it may not be high brow but it's true nonetheless , if we truly had a altruistic government I could see taxes as a necessary evil as long as there was proper representation with the taxes

[@mauricio9564]

Let’s see some things which taxes funded and fund,social security,schools,roads,lower fuel cost,lower food prices,space program,the nuclear programs you so love(nuclear is literally the most government run energy program lol it is low profit for its first ten years hence why it is usually run by government directly or through subsidies to private companies).Taxes are and will continue to be the way to you know fund society,you have absolutely no problem with paying for Walmart nor other companies which are dictatorial non democratic institutions.Taxes are public investment,same way you paying a company creates a private investments which may improve society,government investments are that but public.Every major civilization in history has had a taxation system it is needed to make society function and if you look at the wealthiest countries almost 100% of them have 40% of gdp to tax ration while the poorest like Afghanistan have a tax to gdp ratio of 10% or lower.No taxes means no roads,no schools,no public transport,etc.So that should be it first of all.As this paper showed the ONLY WAY TO END CLIMATE CHANGE IS THROUGH INCENTIVIZING ITS END.You need to either create a carbon tax as seen here or directly nationalize the energy sector and carry out a central plan targeting carbon emmission,a carbon tax is the compromise not no taxes.As for coal workers,only 30,000 people work on it in the US,Germany shut down all hard black coal factories in 2018 by law and all the workers were retrained and are doing fine now.We can do same thing globally.

[@mauricio9564]

And since you are so smart what is your solution?Every expert from MIT to experts on the electric grid agree that only way to hasten the change to cleaner energy is state investment,carbon taxes and or direct planning.In the US we literally see a trend we’re when state governments fund solar and wind it rises massively and anytime they pull the funds and goes back to shit and none get built.One huge reason specially for wind is that it’s unprofitable as it requieres little labor to get started not continual labor to maintain it.There has been studies that show at full scale in fact they make zero profit,so private companies don’t want it unless the government funds it to make up for the lost revenue .Nuclear which you seem to love so much ,almost like 1000% of all advancements in nuclear and all nuclear plants are state funded or owned around the world because it’s extremely expensive risk and low reward,hence states being the main funders of it who can pull many many resources.So what would be your market solution,cap and trade was the most libertarian proposal and it’s a complete failure in terms of reducing carbon emissions.So what is your market based solution ?

[@brandonmclaine17]

Such hostility , fist off calm your tits and secondly , I never said no taxation whatsoever what I did say is that I do not trust the government whether it be state , local , or federal to do the right thing with the tax revenue , I mean for chist sake just look at how it spends the current level of tax revenue it has now (us government) it spends it frivolously and hasn't balanced a budget in 20 years , we're so far in debt that my great grandchildren will still be paying that debt off if we're even still a country by then , did you even read all of what I said or just cherry pick what triggered you ? I'll say it again , making government bigger will not make it better , is that simple enough for you ? A carbon tax will hit lower income families including both you and me harder , severely harder than these large companies because unlike us , they have the capital and the government subsidies to bear the cost however the likely outcome will be that they simply shut down . Again I'm all for finding alternatives to carbon based fuels , but you won't succeed at top down government edict in the US , it simply won't work . And lastly I understand taxes are necessary TO A POINT but that doesn't make them a good thing , that's why they're called a necessary evil , but besides that we're supposed to have no taxation without representation and might I remind you in the use we haven't had representation of our tax dollars in decades . Oh and bonus fact , since you want to list what our tax dollars go to that you like , let me remind you of what they're used for alot more than beneficial uses . Fast and furious , under the Obama administration taxes we're used to purchase weapons to give to the Mexican cartels "to track them" only to be used against us getting our people killed . the Crack cocaine epidemic of the 80s and 90s was fuelled by both Clinton and Ragan when they shipped in massive amounts of it to inner cities again funded by tax dollars . Do you remember the stimulus package that was passed at the start of the rona ? Well don't forget that the American people only received a fraction of that money that was taken from us through....wait for it .....here it comes ....you guessed it , tax revenue the vast majority of said stimulus went outside the USA and a good majority of what went outside the country went to special interest groups and the most egregious was 50 million to Pakistan for fucking gender studies programs. And that's just a few examples of what I was referring to , there's many many more , it's literally a policy of doing for more harm than good dude Don't believe me ? Do Just like kamala said "Google it" smart guy 😉

[@ragnarok7976]

@@mauricio9564 If you put a space after the "." it won't look like you are posting links every paragraph... FYI.

[@DarkShroom]

you probabally have to get past your feelings about tax to understand how tax works

[@verdiss7487]

Something that needs to be said in response to the whole "carbon taxes will hurt our economy" argument -- what carbon taxes are doing is exposing hidden negative externalities, and pricing them into the pricetag instead of putting them off for the future. Untaxed CO2 isn't cheaper, it still costs that money in the future. You could even say that companies and actors driving CO2 emissions are getting a subsidy -- they don't have to pay for a part of their usage, instead passing that cost the future people and governments.

[@miinyoo]

There are smarter ways to deal with the problem than resorting to taxation (which is another word for state violence in the end).

[@weasle2904]

You're justifying it not proving anything. This form of carbon tax would be absolutely catastrophic economically. We are slowly being trained to be tolerant of blatant over reaching dystopian taxes. There are far more efficient methods to migrate to clean energy.

[@tomfeng5645]

@@miinyoo I don't see any other way of stopping companies from externalizing costs, whether it be environmental or social. History has shown that only strong wide-scale intervention (almost exclusively by the government after citizen pressure) can do anything about that, with the establishment of Parks Services, EPA, FDA, OSHA etc. None of these agencies are perfect of course, but little alternatives exist and we would be much worse off without them.

[@TheMightyZwom]

@@miinyoo Like what?

[@TheMightyZwom]

@@weasle2904 Okay - explain them then...

[@athinkingman]

It seemed odd that in the study, there was effectively zero change in the amount of power coming from nuclear, even though everything points to nuclear as the best source of clean reliable energy. The graph has wind power going from a tiny share to the largest single source of energy. Given everything I've seen on wind-power, this seems incredibly unrealistic. Did the study look at factors other than simple economics? Can you really get ~40% of your power from wind?

[@TheMightyZwom]

The main reason is - imho - cost. Nuclear is waaay over-hyped as a clean and cheap source of energy. And whilst it is cleaner than most it isn't as cheap as many claim. Also: As far as I know it takes about a decade or more to plan & built a nuclear power plant. Wind and Solar can be up-scaled so much faster. Plus: That price is not going to go down (it will for solar and wind, however), so it is very realistic in my opinion that nuclear will stay an important part of the energy mix, but won't grow dramatically.

[@jsn1252]

No, you can't. Not without spending an absurd amount of money on storage. And without on-site storage, intermittent generators and collectors in large proportions lead to sub-synchronous resonance. The short version is that things are built around specific electrical and mechanical frequencies, and can tear themselves outside of these values. Retrofitting only the US power grid to deal withe SSR is estimated to cost $10 trillion.

[@JoshyStuart]

I work for one of the biggest energy retailers in Australia, and they laugh when ppl bring up nuclear. They are going all out on wind, solar, pumped hydro and carbon capture to offset gas. These renewables will get much closer to zero marginal cost than fossil fuels. And that's why energy companies are not investing in nuclear eg enormous capex, paid back over long periods, and still very high opex compared with solar and wind.

[@TheMightyZwom]

@@jsn1252 In the long run there isn't going to be another option than to invest in storage... (And I'm not talking about lithium ion batteries obviously - because they are not a good choice for long-term storage in grid applications.)

[@jsn1252]

@@TheMightyZwom You need to do better research then. The way the world has come to do nuclear power, i.e. solid fuel immersed in water inside a giant pressure cooker inside a concrete bunker, might be the worst way to do nuclear power. And we've known better ways to do it since the 1950s. Judging anything by the worst way to do it isn't a fair assessment. ThorCon is just one company trying to bring these alternative approaches to market, and has been making good progress in its partnership with the Indonesian government. They estimate half the capital cost of an equivalent coal plant and 1/5 the fuel cost. Construction is expected to take a year in a shipyard and only 2 years from the time permits are acquired to grid power. And just the world's surplus shipbuilding capacity is enough to churn out hundreds of their power plants every year. No, they can't. Intermittent energy collectors cheat LCOE calculations. If they were forced to meet the assumption that they were dispatchable generators, their costs would balloon to more than double what it costs to build a legacy type reactor in the US right now, plus astronomical on-going costs.

[@AlboLunae]

Great video. It would have been good to also talk about carbon emissions from non fuel sources, such as agriculture. Agricultural emissions are quite large and any carbon tax system which doesn't interoperate all large sources of carbon emissions is missing carbon and minimising its effectiveness. An example of this is the emissions trading scheme in the EU

[@tjs200]

This is realistically never going to happen, agriculture is subsidized as it is already, and doing anything that would make food more expensive is political suicide. As far as priorities go, the food supply & food security are more important than climate change. Not to mention that currently theres not a lot of practical ways to reduce agricultural emissions that dont also reduce yield.

[@Noam_.Menashe]

I'd rather live with a comfortable supply of food and leisure, than be starving but at least the land in Russia is still icy.

[@gorkyd7912]

You're right, you should stop eating right now.

[@Mike-oz4cv]

You only looked at electricity production, right? It gets much more difficult and complex when you also consider heating, transportation, food production and industries.

[@matkurcher9469]

The hard and fast fact is that big business will always pass the costs down to the consumer. Tax increases or new equipment and technology costs will hit the consumers pocket book and profits stay in the pockets of executives. The price of goods, services and tax have never decreased.

[@alexanderking9168]

The price of goods or services have never decreased? Do you know how much a computer cost in the 80s? The cost for every single basic unit of computation has decreased since the 80s, and now I can buy a $200 smartphone that does 100 times the computational work a $20,000 computer could do.

[@lomiification]

How has the percent of wages spent on food changed over the past 200 years? Things do and have become cheaper, even while removing pollutants. The numbers look like they're going up, but the value those numbers represent goes down over time

[@danielgerhardson7017]

The models seem to take a lot of assumptions. The growth of EV will put more demand on electrical grids and push for more mining to produce EV. A carbon tax that goes back to the taxed? Just a circle?

[@ewdtrey]

Minus burecratic losses and "random unaccounted for losses"

[@StreetcarHammock]

It isn’t so much a tax as a way to encourage consumers and businesses to purchase and invest in lower carbon alternatives

[@mozismobile]

Yep, most taxes are like that. Think of all the public servants who pay income tax. The question is what social effect we want from the tax, and whether the tax does that well or badly. When you look at something simple and brutal like tax cuts for high income earners it's obvious: the goal of the tax cuts is to make the already wealthy even richer, and those tax cuts do that every well. But with a carbon tax it's more subtle, because the social effect we want is to mitigate the effect of the climate catastrophe. So there's a bit of "less carbon emissions", and a bit of "help the people most affected" and a bit of "what's in it for the politicians who are being asked to vote for it".

[@AlexIr99]

A tax that goes to the coal miner (or any other connected professional) who'll lose their job? Maybe training them for future opportunities? And it's only 6-8% of total CO2 tax revenue anyway

[@edd542]

@@mozismobile taxes are about control, they don't actually need taxes when they can just inflate the money supply and take purchasing power directly from everyone.

[@JaySmith91]

That was fantastic. I look forward to videos on other economic and environmental issues.

[@Slaughter619]

Fun fact, Nuclear power makes the cost of fossil fuel production go DOWN significantly, and could allow nations like Canada to export LNG at a highly reduced price, and allow nations like Inida to transition from coal to natural gas fired plants with a little economic support and assistance from the same nations, reducing global emissions by a THIRD

[@BenCrews]

Thank you so much for this, Brian (and team!). I freaking love this channel, and every upload seems better than the last. Your videos give me hope, and excitement with what engineering can do for humanity. Sometimes being bogged down in the day-to-day, I lose the big picture and feel like no one's making meaningful progress. Keep doing what you're doing! :D

[@sebstott3573]

Fantastic video and a really interesting study. I've heard though, that natural gas can be as bad as coal once fugitive emissions (methane leaks) are taken into account. I wonder if those will be factored into the models.

[@jeffbenton6183]

Agreed. There should definitely be a methane tax added into that - there are ways to mitigate methane leaks, and companies should be incentivized to take care of that. That said methane leaks might be "as bad" with regards to climate change, but natural gas is still much cleaner than coal because it doesn't produce all the soot and other harmful emissions besides CO2

[@sebstott3573]

@@jeffbenton6183 For sure, and how "bad" methane is for global warming depends on whether you look at the effect over 10, 20 or 100 years, which is a politically fraught topic. Methane is harder to measure too, but getting better with methane tracking satelites.

[@Sparticulous]

People also forget that hydrogen fuel cells use methane to produce the hydrogen. I heard people say it is green… or “green natural gas” also see slogans of that nonsense in coal country. Or also “clean coal” nonsense

[@jeffbenton6183]

@@sebstott3573 I'm certainly looking forward to MethaneSat. Though it is true that methane is less bad after 100 years, it's still not good, because it degrades into CO2.

[@jeffbenton6183]

@@Sparticulous Well, it depends. It's certainly cheaper to get hydrogen from methane than from water, it doesn't always come from natural gas. If engineers can make an electrolysis process cheap enough to be sustainable, then it would be accurate to call hydrogen "green." EDIT: Even *if* methane is our main source of hydrogen, it would still be correct to call it "green" if we actually use the waste carbon for something, rather than let it oxidize and escape into the atmosphere. One example of this is the current process of creating carbon nanotube, as detailed in Brian's video on the subject: methane is processed to create the nanotubes, and hydrogen gas is released as a waste product.

[@dannykusuma2431]

Few critics: 1. It leads to price spike for few years, before showing good result. No administration with 5 year election cycle would implement this. 2. Significant dip in the energy generation means million of people without electricity? 3. Electricity is just quarter of total primary energy use.

[@kokofan50]

We also have sources that avoid those problems.

[@spock81]

The most concerning thing to me that you didn't address is the major drop in energy production upon tax implementation. That's going to cause problems somewhere. Informative video though!

[@StreetcarHammock]

Perhaps yes, but perhaps a lot of that lost energy production is easily offset by increased energy efficiency? Just a thought

[@Mrcrowntown]

The problem I have with taxes, is that the same organization(government) that put us where we are today, is now demanding we pay them a tax to stop doing what they did to us. But in reality, they are sandbagging their own actions, and padding their own pockets. It's a tale as old as time, and we still have not learned that government never has our best interest in mind.

[@moosiemoose1337]

100% agreed.

[@madattaktube]

What's the alternative? Genuine question, as from my perspective it's a rock and a hard place: After all, the big corporations, the oil companies, are just as responsible as the corrupt governments, and leaving them to pillage the planet without interference doesn't sound much better. I know there's still dumb-ass fossil fuel subsidies that exist in lots of places, but with the shear power of the oil industry and the lack of accountability inherent in unregulated capitalism I don't think that would be enough.

[@ba-a-a]

@@madattaktube I guess we will pay for this experiment so globalist elite could say "I guess it didn't work out in the end, huh?"

[@TheYoungSapling]

The United States in particular simply isn’t politically or socially equipped to tackle climate change responsibly. It’s scary. Other nations with more functional (or authoritarian) political systems will need to take the lead.

[@Mrcrowntown]

@@jonathantreffler6641 I would not go as far as to nationalize the issue. I left it ambiguous for a reason, because all governments are political. With politicization, comes a lack of awareness of the human condition. It becomes about the corporation(government) and its revenue stream at the costs of the citizens own freedom of choice.

[@majd_shoots]

5:25 😂😂😂😂😂 That's when you know you have an Irish on the mic 😂😂😂😂

[@rgbj60]

I was afraid to watch this after the fiasco that was “Why Solar Failed in Africa,” but I was pleasantly surprised. Good video.

[@northernmetalworker]

Carbon tax really reminds me of the recycling deposit you pay on your bottles and cans, as it has recently been found out, most of those plastics that were returned, were being shipped off to china for disposal, instead of actually recycling.

[@TheYoungSapling]

You don’t understand carbon taxes if this is your take away. Do you mean the cap and trade system?

[@skipperhun7580]

@@TheYoungSapling I don't know if intentionally, but he actually makes a good point. In the video carbon taxes are implemented by taxing fuels. This encourages moving industry to countries with no carbon tax and shipping the finished product back, dodging the taxes.

[@gorkyd7912]

@@TheYoungSapling You don't understand carbon taxes if you believe in magic. If I burn diesel I'm producing CO2. If I burn wood I'm CO2 neutral. Get the problem yet? If I cut down the trees and burn them I'm CO2 neutral....

[@Lady-V]

2:40 This is mostly true in places that are car dependent; in places that are walkable/have good public transport this is much less of an issue. Places like the Netherlands have shown how much you can do to change a place that's car dependent in 30 years, and Paris while still having a long way to go shows what can be done in a much shorter 4 years.

[@brandonmckibben1164]

In tighter, more densely developed cities this can make sense, but for rural areas it will certainly be a much more difficult sell. Higher impact and almost unavoidable for country families.

[@Lady-V]

@@brandonmckibben1164 Most certainly

[@zee-vc5wl]

@@Lady-V all this dose is fuck us over. this is why rural people hate this. in these plans they always say they will help us, but they never do. my current electricity bill is already 350$ a month from 150$ last year. i cant afford a "50% increase" (it probably will be up to 200%) the government continues to fuck us over and we get no benefits form taxes or anything government funded. people living in big cities want to "save the earth" from a 3C degree change with us as the collateral. the funny thing is, cities are the cause of all the pollution and problems in the first place

[@Lady-V]

@@zee-vc5wl What I advocate for is better city design to lower the emissions that happen in the city as just as you've said most of the pollution from cars is coming from cities when it comes to individuals. This also has a side effect of raising the quality of life there and it doesn't really affect rural communities.

[@jameskaraganis2569]

"... British Thermal Unit, which I refuse to use." I'm still chuckling at that one.

[@ramuk1933]

Why wouldn't the government send the taxes right back as subsidies to energy companies? Then the price wouldn't change much (??) while still inscentivising lower emissions.

[@victorarreola822]

If combatting climate change is not practical due to the strains on the economy, the problem is not climate change it's the structure economy

[@MN-jw7mm]

No, it's the nature of people. You can't combat climate change because people don't care. Stop scapegoating the "economy". It's not a thing that exists independently from people.

[@victorarreola822]

@@MN-jw7mm Economic conditions most definitely contribute to "the nature of people". The most common reasons people don't care about climate change is because they're either too busy trying to put food on the table or because they're personally enriching themselves from the factors that contribute to climate change, such as fossil fuels.

[@natedog2059]

Really well put together and definitely highlights the need for more economic incentives to decarbonize. The only issue that’s glaring to me is the near 10-15% drop in total energy production projected at 7:50 (let alone the 50% price hikes). While this is the most extreme tax proposal and can be tuned, it seems the sudden rollout of the tax strategy at any magnitude is going to shock the economy way too much (especially for the consumer). Something rolled out slower might be better as renewables are already cheaper and storage tech like batteries are maturing more, but sudden impulsive tax rollouts look like this would cause too much shock.

[@willwin4744]

Yes, somewhat regular blackouts even just for a couple months could grind the economy to a halt.

[@mindblade101]

@@willwin4744 You probably wouldn't even need that, brown outs are just as bad.

[@TheSolitaryEye]

Yeah that sudden drop in output and only a steady climb back to capacity means a solid decade of rolling blackouts assuming no economic growth through that period. But of course, every country in the world is projecting massive increases in electricity needs. While I believe there is not going to be a painless solution to climate change, and I think carbon taxes are going to be a part of the solution, unfortunately the most effective tax strategy just isn't going to happen. Even if it somehow got implemented, there would be an uproar once the blackouts started. Just look at China right now. Their blackouts are causing civil unrest despite the fact that they can basically make anyone disappear without due process. If the fear of the secret police can't stop riots, I don't know that there's anything that will.

[@jfkusa123]

It also likely might not account for adaptation that could be done if a three-five year advance was given before the tax implemented.

[@TheSolitaryEye]

@@strange-universe There was a time when just curbing emissions would have been enough, and unfortunately we blew right past that and into crisis territory, where we all are now. Even a 90% cut in emissions isn't enough at this point. Even zero isn't enough. We need reversal. We need carbon storage. Because burning fossil fuels for almost 200 years has been taking naturally stored carbon and blasting it into the atmosphere, effectively. We have to undo that.

[@mauzen_]

I love how although this is a proper researched argument, Mr. Real Engineering uses terminology like "Yeeted" to describe his argument. 7:55

[@theflaggeddragon9472]

I just want to say this is an amazingly well done video. Every time I had a concern (like fossil fuel subsidies) you addressed it. The corporations got us in this mess and made a killing for it. They need to pay (literally) for what they're responsible for.

[@wanderdhollander7374]

I AGREE, but it's really hard to make companies pay without hitting consumers

[@jcgoogle1808]

So you and your ancestors who have lived and thrived off using fossil fuels bear no responsibility? Nobody forced you to hook up power to your home, that occupies once CO2 absorbing vegetaiton, buy a car and drive,..... Or have you and your family generated your own power for eons?

[@zashbot]

they never will, violence is the only answer

[@VeggiePower303]

This video is a complete lie. There is no man made Global warming. CO2 is NOT a pollutant, it is a plant food. Farmers pump 2000ppm CO2 into their green-houses to increase food production by double. Because we only have 400ppm in the air. We need to burn more fossil fuels (cleanly) to increase the level of CO2 Globally. It will NOT create Global warming, because the water vapor will compensate easily. In Earth's history there have been levels of CO2 over 8000ppm. End the plants were thriving more then today. Everything was growing huge. Imagine apples as big as your head. There is no food shortage if we increase the level of CO2 in the air to even ten times of what it is today. CO2 makes the Earth Greener. kzbin.info?search_query=co2++earth+green

[@wesjones6370]

the problem is, corporations don't pay. People do. A corporation only makes money when it sells to consumers. Thus, all money a corporation has, comes from consumers. Raise the costs on a corporation, and you raise the cost on the consumer. We've had. a carbon tax here in Canada for 7 years now. And the results are quite difinitive. Markets have not progressed. It has hurt industries so badly, especially on the international scale, in ways that couldn't be predicted, that exceptions had to be created for airliners, farmers, and even many energy producers...which ultimately wound up creating even more problems...since the money that was supposed to be returned to the citizens based on income levels, but massive portions end up going to corporations to prevent collapse...which leaves local businesses in the dust as corporations get subsidized, but small producers don't. And to top it all off, carbon emissions are still rising here at the exact same rate they were prior to the carbon tax....with the only difference being that life is becoming more unaffordable every year. almost 1/3 of Canadians have had to go to the food bank this last year, as they cannot afford their groceries that have skyrocketed as a result of the carbon tax. ....and on top of all of that, the tax winds up punishing actual green producers due to the flaw of central planning: Greenhouses in Ontario used to produce tomatoes that were far more environmental, and far more sustainable than shipping in from Mexico. Yet, the production of CO2 is taxed...and so the Greenhouse, which requires CO2 to be used (in a contained environment where it is taken up by plants and doesn't emit into the environment). As a result, the carbon tax has priced these out of markets, where by retailers are forced to ship tomatoes in from Mexico, using fossil fuels to transport, and paying no carbon taxes to produce.

[@ferstuck37]

So what you are saying is force industry through taxation to change? but since they are passing the tax onto consumers. Electric cars are not an answer where the hell do you think that electricity comes from out of the air.

[@ten_tego_teges]

The part you missed is that they are competing with carbon-free energy sources which will be more profitable if you tax fossil fuels.

[@ferstuck37]

Tax fossil fuels do you think wind generated power is great, their life is twenty years then they bury the the blades in a landfill solar power! If they develop more efficient panels, might work if you can transport it where it’s needed, fossil fuels can be made more efficient if more money is invested other than coal.

[@seneca983]

@@ferstuck37 "they are passing the tax onto consumers" Then consuming more carbon intensive products becomes more expensive and the consumers will consume less of those. That's exactly what should happen.

[@StephanTrube]

Of course the industry will change with new incentives. Even if they pass the price onto consumers. The incentives also mean incentives for research and development. Incentives for investment. Who's gonna invest in coal plants in this scenario?

[@tomwantshelp]

Yes, the electricity does come from the air. Wind power is now cheaper than fossil fuels even without a carbon tax.

[@atikahrostam5778]

Great video RE! Hopefully there will be a study like this that includes the developing and poor nations.

[@zacharyhenderson2902]

That's really neat, but it's hard to say for certain that a policy will be effective because a supercomputing program hybridizing two models based entirely around electrical generation, which were not built to be run together predicted that entirely new sources of electrical generation would be created.

[@MetroidChild]

A cautionary tale people should know before they take a revolutionary stance to fast and hard carbon taxes: Here in Sweden diesel is 60% tax (total price went up like 50% in 2 years), this combined with awful electricity prices due to a premature shutdown of nuclear has led to a situation where many industries and small businesses with low margins are shutting down because outsourcing products is simply cheaper when companies get no financial compensation (and planned such is too little too late). You can't just assume "the energy market will fix it", because the damage done to the market until companies across the board adjust can be more devastating than the benefits of the end result itself promises to deliver, especially when your government is greedy.

[@jared_bowden]

10:30 - The importance of eliminating coal is actually what worries me. In America, despite making up only a relatively small part of the workforce, due to the wacky way that power is balanced in the US government, coal workers and companies have an extreme amount of power (as any one who has been following American politics as of recent can tell): As a result, any solution that in any way harms coal companies whatsoever, even if it is _massively_ beneficial to the _vast majority_ of the rest of the US _and the world_ and has a _majority_ of support, will still be next to impossible to actually implement unless you can either: a) implement it in a way that is good for the people that live in coal country (which is definitely possible) AND actually _convince_ the voters that what you're doing _is_ good for them despite whatever so-and-so might say (which is the hard part) or: b) find some way to subvert the traditional power structure in America and get legislation passed. Similar political catches exist around the world. Hearing about the usage of computer models to predict how legislation effects the future is really cool, and what I think would be very valuable is to also include models of the governments and the various competing interest groups to see how we can actually get vitally necessary legislation like this passed.

[@trentconley4374]

What do you propose implementing that wouldn't hurt the coal workers?

[@jared_bowden]

​@@trentconley4374 The policies that I have seen tend to go like this: since converting the energy grid will generate a bunch of jobs (a net positive overall), you have to be able to generate those new jobs in places where the workforce is heavily reliant on fossil fuels, so that people can be transitioned from one to the other without getting unemployed. In some places, this will "simply" mean moving a fossil-fuel power-plant's workforce over to a renewable power plant; in other places the transition might be more indirect. There are many jobs that will need transitioning, not just miners, I just mentioned them in particular due to the acute political position they're in, sort of a case study.

[@danechristmas6570]

The problem with that approach is that there are way too many "ifs" / hypotheticals. If we are willing to go that far, then Nuclear would be a much more efficient and much less economically disruptive option. After all, electric vehicles will have to consume high amounts of energy to deliver the same efficiency as ICE, hence there would be a need for higher, reliable power generation, to mitigate the certain disastrous effects of grid failure. And that's not hypothetical. As the demand for more electricity increases exponentially, if the current grid infrastructure if not rapidly improved and delivery capacity increased, power failure, especially at peak consumption, will occur. California has the highest number of electric vehicles... California leads in renewable energy subsidies and taxes However, California also suffers from regular power outages. A smarter option might be decentralization of power generation and "smart grids"..More people going off-grid, consuming only what they need could potentially mitigate against the complexity of a carbon tax.

[@Erik-pu4mj]

It seems the US will undoubtedly need a decentralized (for cyber defense purposes) smart grid to manage new sources of energy; it's not this 'or' carbon tax. Within that infrastructure, individuals and small communities going off-grid would help. I'm skeptical, however, that many consumers will have that opportunity due to costs. Likewise, it may not help much on the scale of a country's energy costs. As for nuclear power, Real Engineering did a video, _The Economics of Nuclear Energy_ (kzbin.info/www/bejne/i3TCc3awZdWtg9k), addressing its high price. Currently, it's a high investment with guaranteed costs for keeping the plant up to evolving standards. Around 13:20 he addresses how wind, solar, and natural gas are significantly cheaper; this may explain why the projections in the carbon tax study favor those energies (regardless of hypotheticals). Nuclear energy may become "smaller, cheaper, and safer" as that video suggests, but until that happens nuclear likely won't be used during a rapid shift away from coal. It appears much easier (and a safer investment) for industries to scale up what's already cheap and improve production costs there.

[@hieronymusnervig8712]

Use part of the tax revenue to improve the grid 🤯 And a carbon tax could also encourage the development of products that use less electricity. Better do something with a lot of "ifs" than doing nothing at all and getting the "else"

[@Alfsrapedungeon]

fuck electric cars,, useless tech and actually more environmentally damaging to build etc than it is to run a good old petrol car...

[@Alfsrapedungeon]

@@hieronymusnervig8712 NO MORE TAXES!!!!!

[@jdeluca6181]

EVs consume way less than ICE vehicles. It’s equivalent to having your refrigerator plugged in. The whole point of EVs is to charge them at home. And they use that energy far more efficiently than ICE cars. Check out engineering explained for a good video. They essentially go 150 miles per gallon if you compare how much energy is consumed.

[@educationlife9363]

"And I refuse to use it".... I felt that😂😂

[@luciusvanvugt5565]

the graphs and the video in general wasn't boring at all, actually an interesting video in itself

[@XavierAway]

I’m not sure it’s gonna be as smooth sailing as you make it out to be, I think if you’re gonna call the video the “truth” about it you have to look at it from both sides and I’m not sure you address all the possible ramifications of implementing a carbon tax. It all sounds too good to be true. I do hope you’re right though and I do appreciate it’s difficult to make a completely balanced video on hypotheticals

[@chas1878]

Giving the inefficient and corrupt government even more money to waste sure sounds like it's gonna solve so many problems

[@mouapple]

@@chas1878 I don't know if that argument works hey. Like if my car is inefficient I can't solve that by not putting more petrol in it. I still need the car so I have to put in petrol and also do the work to make it more efficient.

[@dinglesworld]

@@mouapple Well yeah but thats not the point of the comment. The point isn't to make a sound, detailed argument. The point is to make a claim, force you to disprove it, and ignore or double down on the claim when someone else critiques it appropriately.

[@dinglesworld]

I'm guessing his approach wasn't to listen to any side. Instead, he found information, processed it scientifically to his best ability, and came to a detailed conclusion. I like to think he's biased towards strong evidence and not a specific argument or idea.

[@Cycle4LifeGab]

It's not as hypothetical as it sounds, maybe in the US it is for now, but other nations have already implemented similar strategies successfully. It is nice to see that the modelling shows promising results 🙏

[@existentialangst285]

great video, personally I’m interested in and excited by data-heavy and in-depth videos like this.

[@brianhenrichs9409]

I want more data dense videos as well.

[@Arunnn241]

Data heavy? He starts the first minute saying "there's numerous studies and scientists that all agree, these issues are all caused by our excess use of (blah) fossil fuels" and then he doesn't even show a single one. And then everything he talks about is *projected* graphs from the year 2020 onwards, with ZERO discussion on anything prior. There's no data. Just speculation. Speculation without any evidence to back up the models.

[@wr102ka7]

@@Arunnn241 And it only shows one study, even an undergraduate literatural review needs more than one journal lol. Also the source materials completely overlooked the emission caused by spent at least 5 trillion to renovate the grid, and completely ignored inflation/future value. Also assumed that US industries have the capacity to even meet the demands of engry storage.(not discussed at all). Welp pretty typical for this channel to overall simplified issues for whatever reason.

[@gorkyd7912]

Models are not data.

[@Dano19901000]

Coming from Canada with high carbon tax and $150 carbon tax rebate per year the biggest issue is people who don't need to travel for work get a net positive while people who need to travel for work are being robbed. Only wealthy people can afford an electric car while the rest of us suffer so they can receive tax rebates while we struggle to heat our homes.

[@trueRocc]

Yup, but the government doesn't want to see that everything is going to get too expensive. They want to increase the tax so people can't even afford food or travel. It's actually helping to increase inflation in my opinion. As for electricity, my place I have in a small town, ever since the delivery fee increased $50/ month and is not going down at all.

[@PropeIIant]

Gotta love when you have an entire generation who was traumatized by Chernobyl and 3 Mile Island now becoming the main voting and governing bases. Nuclear is so poorly treated for what it can offer the world.

[@jareknowak8712]

I was born in 82 in Poland, they gave me the "Lugola liquid", just like they gave it to any other kid. I have nothing against nuclear power, we are "40 years smarter" than in Czarnobyl times, nuclear is the right way.

[@Luke..luke..luke..]

Never thought I'd comment like this on one of these, but did you check your numbers for CO2 per tonne of coal? You stated that 35kg of coal produces 1tonne of CO2 on combustion. Were you factoring in all the extraction or just missed a conversion equation up?

[@oliveravery9575]

He actually said that 35 kg of coal is equal to about 1 gigajoul of energy, which emits a little under a tenth of a tonne of CO2. Understandable mistake, it was a lot of numbers to keep track of in different scales.

[@graye2799]

You can't say it works based on 1 study. After covid and the econimic impact of that, im sure the general public would love to see their energy prices increase for 5 - 10 years while the government tries to find ways to skip out on paying the money back and apply the tax to the common man.

[@RonGrethel]

I love how you wrapped the political science into the engineering

[@krishanmistry6372]

I hope new generation nuclear power plants have better economics then their predecessors and can make up baseload. The terrapower plant in Wyoming is interesting, since it is converting an old coal plant into a small modular reactor

[@beaudavis3808]

They better or I will scream extremely loudly.

[@user-jx1ip3iy3f]

It is not the "free market" economics of nuclear power, government policies make nuclear prohibitively expensive by design.

[@krishanmistry6372]

The free market economics of nuclear reactors are the problem. Sure costly safety regulations don't help, but nuclear reactors take significantly longer to build and often overrun budget and schedule. Look at plant vogtle

[@Trim11]

​@@jonathantreffler6641 "that could magically decrease the Half-life of elements" But we can get them back to the cycle and reuse them. About 90% of 'nuclear waste' can be reused. Less than 11% of french nuclear waste (Orano company power plants data) are long life ones. Rest will get neutral in few hundreds years (imperceptible within 300 years they say).

[@Trim11]

@@jonathantreffler6641 Waste made by 100 million people in 50 years, which can be stored in one Walmart-sized place with depth of 20 meters? And only 11% of it will be still dangerous in few hundred years.