Personally, I favor a model of direct government spending for CO2 capture (along with emissions regulations where appropriate). Carbon pricing ends up being either a tax or an opportunity for gaming or partisanship, and just adds needless complexity everywhere.
If we can move climate change from a political tool to a concrete technological problem, government can address it directly, the same as other infrastructure, and pay operators like this on a tonnage basis to extract carbon.
I agree that in principle it sounds good. The one issue I pick up on here is the old 'tragedy of the commons' - some countries are just not going to want to pay for it, meaning that other countries will be hugely economically impacted by this. As far as I can see, the only way to make this enforceable for the entire planet is for the largest consumer economies (US&EU) to include a carbon boarder tax where emissions can't be outsourced to other countries.
Comments
Personally, I favor a model of direct government spending for CO2 capture (along with emissions regulations where appropriate). Carbon pricing ends up being either a tax or an opportunity for gaming or partisanship, and just adds needless complexity everywhere.
If we can move climate change from a political tool to a concrete technological problem, government can address it directly, the same as other infrastructure, and pay operators like this on a tonnage basis to extract carbon.
I agree that in principle it sounds good. The one issue I pick up on here is the old 'tragedy of the commons' - some countries are just not going to want to pay for it, meaning that other countries will be hugely economically impacted by this. As far as I can see, the only way to make this enforceable for the entire planet is for the largest consumer economies (US&EU) to include a carbon boarder tax where emissions can't be outsourced to other countries.