this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
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You could, for example, cap total importation & extraction at a national or regional level, and lower that cap each year.
I'm just having trouble imagining the sort of global cooperation required for something like this. It seems significantly more difficult than a carbon tax, which is practically impossible already.
Cap systems like this are about equivalent to carbon taxes in terms of difficulty in cooperating around, but give certainty about total emissions instead of about future prices. They're mostly not implemented because they make it clear that you need to actually decarbonize.
The US wouldn't actually need to cooperate with other countries, the US GHG footprint is huge. Even considering just the US military, such a scheme would make a massive difference.
If implemented US-wide, it would obviously be an issue how you then tax (cheap) imports made with fossil fuels (which incidentally is a question the EU is already pondering) and what to do about your exports. But it should definitely be possible.
That's a fair point. It still seems like focusing on the supply side would just result in higher prices (I'm thinking just oil imports), while enriching other countries that still pump. So money is sent abroad, Americans pay more and are pissed off and are back to being dependent on global markets. Whereas a tax would lower demand in an "artificial" way that keeps the money in the borders to be used on stuff that benefits people, like enabling the transition itself. Taxes are simple and they work. I imagine we'd have to be basically off oil already before moratoriums would be feasible politically. Gas is a bit different than oil because it's not really a global market, but I'm no expert on this stuff. I just want to the fossil fuels to stay in the ground one way or another.
If we imposed a high minimum for extraction and a large storage requirement we could just bankrupt the industry and drive the global prices down to nothing, making extraction not worth it.