How Europe’s new carbon tax on imported goods will change global trade
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
I’m not clear on some details of what you’re saying. You’re referring to a shift in the relative costs of goods vs labour? I don’t see anything that will bring labour costs down per se (and arguably we shouldn’t).
But either way, that sort of shift would seem to suggest that workers would wind up with less purchasing power. Would the savings on repairing goods (vs toss and replace) more than compensate? I would be interested to see an investigation on that front.
Otherwise, a decrease in property values may be the best way to decrease cost of living for most people. Sharply lower mortgage payments (going forward) and lower rent would be a sea change for huge swaths of the global population. Land values are not strictly a climate issue, but if we are all to pay for carbon reductions (which is wise), we likely need something else to give.
Upvote
29
(29
/
0)
The poster is probably getting at that in today’s society it’s cheaper to throw away and buy new, including when it come to things such as buildings. This has an obvious ecological/carbon impact disadvantage and if the balance was different, it might make more economic sense (even short term) to repair things.
I obviously don’t think that the solution is making labour cheaper, but rather that goods is priced according to its climate impact.
Upvote
52
(52
/
0)
Upvote
43
(45
/
-2)
Gasoline is grossly underpriced. We spent trillions of dollars and many lives policing the Middle East, a region that we wouldn’t care about were it not for their role in oil production. None of those geopolitical consequences are accounted in the cost you pay at the pump nor are the pollutants emitted from your tailpipe. If we consume less gas, we will either send less money abroad to pay for crude imports or will be able to earn more from selling our crude to the rest of the world. Convert most cars to electricity and a lot of tyrannical anti-American governments would lose their main source of money and power. Oh, and we’d enjoy better air quality and lower asthma rates as a fringe benefit.
Last edited:
Upvote
96
(101
/
-5)
This is so long overdue!
Countries should have been doing this decades ago as globalisation was gutting their domestic manufacturing — this is the kind of thing that a sane country could be using tariffs for (to level the playing field with countries that undercut on wages, regulation etc.).
Countries should have been doing this decades ago as globalisation was gutting their domestic manufacturing — this is the kind of thing that a sane country could be using tariffs for (to level the playing field with countries that undercut on wages, regulation etc.).
Upvote
44
(44
/
0)
The primary challenge with environmental consequences is that the costs are externalized from the market, which makes them invisible, not trackable, and impossible for the market to organically mitigate.
This type of regulation, or regulation like it, is the only real solution.
The environmental costs of industry needs to be internalized into the market's operation.
This type of regulation, or regulation like it, is the only real solution.
The environmental costs of industry needs to be internalized into the market's operation.
Upvote
68
(68
/
0)
The one thing I disagree with in the article is the idea that it will lead to gradual price increases. Over the long term, prices should go down as producers move to clean tech which is cheaper. The main cause of price increases is businesses thinking they can get away with it. Don't encourage them by saying "of course, prices will increase." The EU has strong regulators. I don't always agree with them. But they could do some good here.
Upvote
11
(20
/
-9)
We enforce that all board members, executives and any immediate family are hereby required to spend at least 90% of the year living within the immediate vicinity of their companies most destructive/polluting manufacturing or processing facilities?
I'm actually down for this, it would also prevent people from serving on the boards of so many companies since you couldn't physically spend that amount of time at two or more locations per annum, but regardless I can think of no better way to get an immediate and visceral reaction from the only people in a position to make the most difference here. You can tax all you want but those costs can always be shifted. The invisible hand always seems to find a way.
Upvote
15
(18
/
-3)
This also benefits Canada and the sale of aluminum since we produce the greenest aluminum.
Upvote
27
(28
/
-1)
What kind of average person’s “stuff” could possibly become 30% more expensive due to its fossil fuel energy content — aside from fossil fuels themselves?
Those are exactly the products that deserve to become more costly. Their manufacturers will have a big incentive to reduce their carbon footprint.
Upvote
16
(21
/
-5)
I'm probably going to get heat for this, but the way I see this is it's "mitigation".
It's not a BAD idea, but it's on "everyday goods". That screams mitigation. It's too late for that. We have never - not once - leveled off or dropped the atmospheric CO2 levels. And with the tipping points falling, we never will mitigate it. We had to prevent them from falling because each one lost only accelerates climate change. We already lost one. Others are on the way to being unstoppable, too.
And not to put too fine of a point on it, but since it's clear we need to adapt civilization to the climate that's coming (because civilization as we do it NOW is WHY we have climate change, and is what we need to change to survive climate change), THAT effort is going to be VERY CO2 intensive because it MUST include a HUGE reduction in energy consumed per capita. To do that, you have to build things differently.
You don't change civilization without producing a LOT of CO2.
If the "everyday goods" aren't necessities, then fine. If they are, and the poor can't afford it, you're just heaping more misery on the miserable, and doing nothing of substance to deal with what climate change will do to the human race since the way we do civilization is what's causing climate change in the first place.
It's not a BAD idea, but it's on "everyday goods". That screams mitigation. It's too late for that. We have never - not once - leveled off or dropped the atmospheric CO2 levels. And with the tipping points falling, we never will mitigate it. We had to prevent them from falling because each one lost only accelerates climate change. We already lost one. Others are on the way to being unstoppable, too.
And not to put too fine of a point on it, but since it's clear we need to adapt civilization to the climate that's coming (because civilization as we do it NOW is WHY we have climate change, and is what we need to change to survive climate change), THAT effort is going to be VERY CO2 intensive because it MUST include a HUGE reduction in energy consumed per capita. To do that, you have to build things differently.
You don't change civilization without producing a LOT of CO2.
Had this kind of tax been done 40 years ago, it might have had some impact. I'm just of the opinion that since mitigation failed, there's not a lot of point putting more effort into that unless it's also an equal effort into adaptation. I don't see anything about the adaptation part. And much of it seems to be left up to the imagination. It mostly seems like performance art - meaningless "let's do something" stuff that won't do what it's intended to do.
Civilization's survival is not just about clean technologies, or improving energy efficiency. It's about how we do civilization in the first place. And that's not being addressed at all by this. IMHO, the implementation is flawed, as are the goals. Without a MAJOR push to make this about viable adaptation, it's little more than performance protectionism.
The sad part is it seems the vast majority of people (especially in the climate change field) seem to think that mitigation is going to work. It COULD, if we killed off about 2/3 of the human population overnight. If we explicitly targeted the top 10% of income earners, that would slow things down, too. Neither are are going to stop it, though. So adaptation is all we have left to save civilization, and the way we do it now can't be saved. Hence adaptation on a global scale being needed.
Civilization's survival is not just about clean technologies, or improving energy efficiency. It's about how we do civilization in the first place. And that's not being addressed at all by this. IMHO, the implementation is flawed, as are the goals. Without a MAJOR push to make this about viable adaptation, it's little more than performance protectionism.
The sad part is it seems the vast majority of people (especially in the climate change field) seem to think that mitigation is going to work. It COULD, if we killed off about 2/3 of the human population overnight. If we explicitly targeted the top 10% of income earners, that would slow things down, too. Neither are are going to stop it, though. So adaptation is all we have left to save civilization, and the way we do it now can't be saved. Hence adaptation on a global scale being needed.
If the "everyday goods" aren't necessities, then fine. If they are, and the poor can't afford it, you're just heaping more misery on the miserable, and doing nothing of substance to deal with what climate change will do to the human race since the way we do civilization is what's causing climate change in the first place.
Upvote
-4
(15
/
-19)
Yes, this is also known as a 'border adjustment tariff', and it is used to adjust imports and exports so that they're all on an even playing field.
Trump claimed to be doing something similar but the metrics used didn't make any sense.
Upvote
21
(23
/
-2)
I've felt for decades that having unrestricted free trade will simply push production to places with the worst standards for the environment and workers. I thought that trade should be uniformly adjusted based on the policies of each, so that a country insisting on fair play doesn't suffer an unfair disadvantage.
I'm glad to see this legislation, which is a step in that direction.
I'm glad to see this legislation, which is a step in that direction.
Upvote
51
(51
/
0)
That will only happen if we successfully get rid of all the "line must constantly go up" crowd. Corporations need to start understanding that unlimited growth is cancer and that it may very well kill their companies.
Upvote
31
(35
/
-4)
This is off topic, but I need to correct you on this. It’s not “The Ukraine”. It’s just, simply, Ukraine. This is how Ukrainians want us to name the country. “The Ukraine” is a Russian framing that implies that Ukraine is a part of something else - one translation is “the borderlands (of Russia)” (the bit in parentheses is implied.)
It’s clear that your heart is in the right place; I simply want to correct the naming of the country in line with Ukrainian expectations.
Upvote
71
(73
/
-2)
The US should do the same. Not only for climate but for pollution in general and working conditions. iphones would triple in price if the human cost was included.
Upvote
25
(25
/
0)
That's the kind of tariff that makes sense, as it makes foreign build products more expensive to put them en par with domestically built products to promote better production standards, lower emissions and more sustainability.
Since the EU is still the 2nd/3rd (depends on your metrics) largest consumer market in the world, its a perfect use of this market power to motivate and drive the development and implementation of better practices.
Since the EU is still the 2nd/3rd (depends on your metrics) largest consumer market in the world, its a perfect use of this market power to motivate and drive the development and implementation of better practices.
Upvote
38
(38
/
0)
That's how it is already the top 10% make up 50% of all US consumer spending.
Upvote
1
(8
/
-7)
That's a net thermal efficiency about equal to a typical heat pump whose electricity is entirely fossil fuel based, and a bit below that of newer gas furnaces, which can reach 95%.
If there are renewables in the mix, or it's entirely renewable, the heat pump absolutely dominates the efficiency discussion, with newer models clearing 500% energy efficiency (which would make running it directly from a coal power plant more thermally efficient than your perfectly optimized wood stove).
Upvote
50
(52
/
-2)
I know, right? It's like all those people who complain about how bad cat piss smells and then go on and on about the amazingly delicious smells coming from a chocolate factory. PICK A SIDE, PEOPLE! You can't like one sub-category of smells and then complain about a different sub-category of smells! How dare someone use nuance and distinction instead of engage in a race for maximal context collapse??!
Upvote
81
(83
/
-2)
What do you mean by human cost, and do you have a citation for this claim of a tripling in price?
Upvote
-8
(6
/
-14)
I don’t see any hypocrisy.
What’s the rationale for the Trump tariffs? A supposed trade imbalance - but he slapped everyone with a minimum of 10%, even those countries that the US has a trade surplus with. That’s before we get into the crazy maths used to calculate the tariffs, which saw a number of uninhabited islands included in the tariff lists.
It’s entirely reasonable to be opposed to a slapdash, incoherent scheme like Trump’s whilst supporting a scheme that has a clearly defined and coherent basis for calculating the tariffs.
Upvote
72
(72
/
0)
That's a very anglo-saxon thing. In mainland Europe, rabid late stage capitalism is not popular.
Upvote
24
(27
/
-3)
I didn't find any stove models with 90% heat capture, but I did find models promising 70%, so we can agree that a well-designed stove can capture most of the heat of combustion.
Even if we set aside the air quality and fire safety implications of large scale wood burning in dense cities, growing and harvesting firewood isn't sufficiently scalable to be our dominant heating solution. The US has enough firewood to satisfy a significant number of households (about 2% currently, plus partial satisfaction in a larger number, maybe 8%), but not nearly enough to satisfy all heating needs, even if I take fairly rosy assumptions on achievable firewood harvesting. Coincidentally, the US is close to 10% of both global forest footprint and global heating demand.
The US has about 800 million acres of total forest land, which is 1/3rd of our total land area, and per here, we currently harvest about half of all wood growth for paper and lumber, 25 of 50 billion cubic feet. Much of the rest happens in national parks, remote regions of Alaska, and other locations that are impractical, undesirable, or illegal to harvest, but if we were to optimistically capture 100% of all wood growth in all US forests, then that's about 250 million cords of firewood, which is about 10X what we currently produce, but most of it is softwoods like pine that are only worth 15 to 20 mBTU / cord, versus 20 to 30 mBTU / cord for the nicer hardwoods that people like to burn for pleasure. Let's optimistically go with 20 mBTU / cord. Burning resin-heavy pines also causes a lot of creosote problems in chimneys, creating a risk of chimney fires.
US buildings consume about 6 quadrillion BTUs of heating annually (actual heating output, not the energy spent to provide it), which is equivalent to the energy content of 300 million cords of firewood, at 100% stove heat capture, or 333 million at 90% capture, or 428 million at a more realistic 70% capture.
We don't have enough forests to sustainably provide that much wood, even if we log EVERYTHING.
We might be able to make firewood-only heating work if, instead of wood stoves, we burned the wood in biomass power plants, converting it to electricity at 50% thermal efficiency, and then used that electricity to power heat-pumps that move 3 units of heat per 1 unit of electricity. That provides 150% end-to-end efficiency.
But then the really big benefit of electrification is that we can use multiple power sources. For example, a typical utility-scale solar PV deployment produces around 400 MWhrs / acre / yr, which is 1.4 trillion BTUs of resistive heating or 4.1 trillion BTUs from a typical heat pump, either of which absolutely dwarfs the ~0.000020 trillion BTUs worth of firewood grown per year by the average acre of forest land. If some of the power is provided by daytime solar, or most is provided by solar+batteries, this dramatically reduces the yearly fueling requirements, bringing them down to something much easier to satisfy.
Plants and solar panels are both roughly 29% efficient at photon capture, due to being constrained by roughly the same physics, but then the pathways by which plants produce sugars retain only a tiny fraction of that energy, and only a tiny fraction of the sugars end up being usefully persisted as the lignin and cellulose that we burn in our firewood. Fast growing plants like switchgrass produce more per acre, but even the best plants are still orders of magnitude below the capture efficiency of a solar PV deployment.
Growing biomass for energy is very land intensive. We run out of land if that's our only solution, but not if we use solar/wind/batteries to satisfy most of our energy needs, reserving combustion as a backup source that delivers power only when we need it the most.
Last edited:
Upvote
68
(68
/
0)
Oh you contrarian you! You busted us all!
Actually, no. The reason why everyone pans Trumps tariffs is because they fail to achieve their declared objective, worse, are counterproductive and harm the US economy. And because he lies about “forners” paying them when it’s actually US consumers.
None of that applies here.
Let’s not sidestep the complexities please.
Upvote
63
(63
/
0)
That's... not how any of this works. That's not even remotely what any of this is.
The tax targets products whose supply chain results in high carbon emissions. To shoehorn it into your extremely weird scenario, it's much closer to seeing double digit percentages of a brand's customers now having to pay a higher price compared to a competitor's brand whose supply chain is cleaner.
Will there be companies who cheat the system and lie? Yeah, of course. But you do understand that the vast majority of people don't lie and cheat all the time, right? Like, most human beings are honest most of the time, and most companies do not engage in explicit large-scale evasion of import/export law. The bigger the company, the greater the risk to their brand and their imports in one of the largest markets (the European Union) should they intentionally obscure emissions. Reverse engineering a product's supply chain is complex, but it's not magic, and tracking emissions is increasingly trivial with satellite monitoring.
Maybe I'm being too generous with the seasonal spirit of good faith here, but let me offer a vaguely analogous example in case the above didn't clear things up:
I can ask a troll to stop trolling or risk of being blocked by me, and they will laugh and keep right on trolling. I can block a troll and they won't care--they'll just keep trolling everyone else. Alternatively, many other people may choose to block the troll, and if enough of them do so, then the troll will cease to get any engagement and will go elsewhere or (possibly) change their ways. In your example, I'm like the lone potential customer insisting a store change it's policies, and the troll is like the manager, and the store is actually a forum where people engage in good faith discussions of a news article.
Except, of course, the EU is not a lone customer among thousands. The EU is a group of 27 countries (out of 195 total), representing more than 16% of the entire global economy and about 5.4% of the total population of Earth. In your example, this would mean that one in six forums on the entire Internet (and one in 19 users) would also be informing the troll that they should stop trolling or be blocked from participation.
To bring it back around, this carbon tax will absolutely incentivize the producers of goods to utilize cleaner energy generation, even if not every company whose products become more expensive for a subset of their consumer base cares about the small reduction in sales, and even if those who do care don't end up being perfectly zero carbon. All in much the same way that trolls will continue to troll even if their reach has been reduced to an echo chamber or their bathroom mirror.
Upvote
22
(23
/
-1)
Well... Trump needs $300 million for his Trump Media to pay up for this new merger they're doing.
Upvote
7
(7
/
0)
Prices should increase sub-linearly, as it's often cheaper to reduce emissions than to pay the tax. And that's the entire point of the tax: providing an incentive to reduce emissions. But then there will be emissions that are more expensive to mitigate than to pay the tax rate, and that instantaneously increases the cost of those goods. Or when the tax incentivizes emission reductions, those reductions cannot be cost saving because any emissions reducing behavior that's cheaper than status-quo will get pursued with or without the tax.
Longer term, prices might come down as the result of tech advances, and the carbon price might accelerate those tech advances, so you could argue that point, but it's a non-sequitur to the instantaneous price increase associated with a tax. Certainly government subsidized bootstrapping was very important at early phases of the renewables scaling curve, although I'm not clear how important it is now, compared to simply providing an efficient regulatory environment and not doing dumb things like yanking the permits for offshore wind projects that are 80% constructed.
I think a stronger argument is that carbon taxes raise revenue that we would otherwise have to raise in some other way, revenue that can be used to either pay for additional public services, or be refunded in the form of lower income taxes.
Upvote
19
(19
/
0)
That seems pretty terrible when electric heating is 100% efficient
Upvote
10
(14
/
-4)