throwaway100773

Because the actual harm done from emitting via gasoline usage is not dealt with under the current tax regime. I’d argue that any tax that exists does not encapsulate the cost of removing those emissions from the atmosphere. Considering it costs somewhere between 90 and 400/ ton (possibly more) to remove co2 from the atmosphere, I don’t see how the current tax regimes are quite enough but more importantly the economic harm that’s being done is not being addressed with those tax dollars.

In theory, you could tax gasoline to the level of true removal cost, but unless a market exists to actually remove the carbon it’s moot since the mechanism to clear the damage can’t exist without a functional market on carbon.

Thus, when you burn gasoline you are externalizing. As a result I cannot understand the desire to needlessly do this just so you can drive a superduty to your office job.

New York City has been losing residents for some time. This is not a supply and demand thing as much as easy money policy chasing hard assets. I’ll have to dig it up the numbers, but Manhattan many condos are vacant, and have been bought by foreign money who don’t live in nyc or investors looking to park assets.

You think that because there isn’t a ticker to tell you your home price every moment from 930-4pm on business days.

Because most places don’t have a carbon tax on gasoline emissions.

Not in the us it doesn’t. The two cap and trade programs in the us do little to stop someone at the individual level from needlessly emitting - there is no economic signal to stop. Even some large emitters aren’t subject to any economic signals in rggi, and California has an odd habit of handing out allowances. In a more perfect world, you would be correct.

The question is why isn’t illegal to externalize on my and my kids life by burning gas as if it had no consequence beside being an asinine financial move.

Exactly. It’s a about a capacity for risk. Rich kids have plenty of capacity since they’re essentially backstopped. A poor kid has one shot, and if it doesn’t start paying out quick, that kid starves.

I find this type of logic to be inconsistent with the innovative culture of tech, and a fair bit hypocritical. On one hand, we have a new, fairly unprecedented technology (at least unprecedented on the scale on which it’s used) yet we are relying on tort law that predates the contemplation of anything of this magnitude. Why?

It was reasonable in 1990 that the mechanism that you suggest here would be highly effective in most cases. We are in uncharted waters now and unlike the titanic, I think we should proceed with caution.

How about if someone else puts you out there against your wishes? What then?

I’m not sure there is enough play in demand elasticity to affect significant change relative to the amount of load difference you see. Furthermore the peaks are highly weather sensitive. Would love to be proven wrong though.

You would need utility scale storage to flatten the load curve. The peaks and super peaks are not going away until there is a viable storage mechanism with enough capacity. We are talking significant changes in demand between even the early afternoon and the super peak in almost all load areas (pjm California ercot). The other alternative is a massive buildout or behind the meter solar which theoretically could solve this issue.

I’m guessing here, but I think the number seems high because shale wells have short lifespans. The declines are much higher than conventional wells, and so there are a great many of them to maintain production as the wells decline. There are large a number of DUCs, or drilled but uncompleted wells. They maintain these so that when one well runs dry, another can be brought online to maintain production targets. Also it’s more economic to drill as many wells as you can as quickly as possible even if it exceeds targets because there are economies of scale when it comes to moving and leasing rigs that drill the wells.

This is probably true but not an excuse for the perverted behavior and incentives that result. If 90% of the students at Harvard aren’t in the top 10% but feel entitled to be and thus cheating becomes a more attractive solution than taking the medicine of reality - clearly the penalties for cheating aren’t quite high enough.