We did have to take steps back; the new refrigerants were generally more expensive and less efficient, while the ban made old equipment impossible to legally service (no replacement CFC!).

It's just that the loss in consumption was small enough to not matter to the general public, because their use was not a super large fraction of the economy.

With something as essential as fossil fuels, you have to take a more gradual approach, and market-based economic tweaks are the best way to make those changes in the least costly sectors first.

I agree that carbon is bigger, riskier, etc. But, in the early 90s, I was being educated at primary school to fight deodorant and watching educational videos about teenagers wearing radiation suits. All that raised awareness, but didn’t fix anything directly. Bans did, and they were relatively painless (compared to industry predictions) because viable alternatives existed. The effects were barely felt outside of a few industries, though I concede that some fridges had to retire early. But people mostly just continued as usual, and we don't need to make those videos any more.

It feels analogous (not a perfect analogy, obviously) to now.

We have huge campaigns promoting “consumer action” like better insulation, energy moderation & such. At the political/lobby/policy level, we have complicated solutions based on impossibly complex models of the world. They model human behaviour like fuel demand given some portfolio of tax/credit/cap/whatnot interventions (econometrics, basically), including the invention of new technologies. That model feeds into a climate model. It’s all tied together with a pathological ribbon of international politics. All along the way, all sorts of additional interest come into play from industry lobby to municipal transport plans to pet projects.

"Market based tweaks" are based on so many assumptions, many of them motivated in all sorts of unhelpful ways. As I hinted above, I don't buy the economics of price-based interventions at all, personally. Regardless, it feels to complicated to be a good idea.

I’m basically saying that I think simpler is better. We now have increasingly viable alternatives to carbon grid power and ICE engines. Put together a phase-out plan, based on bans. Subsidize the most severe (or politically connected) end of the spectrum. Tax, regulate or whatnot around the edges.

The important part of the “analogy” (IMO) is this: viable alternative=>ban. If alternatives exist, bans can work relatively quickly, painlessly, and with less room for "corruption" of various sorts (remember ethanol?).

I agree that public education campaigns are not a solution; but you expressed a lot of skepticism about also the economic interventions short of a total ban on carbon-emitting fuels. Before a ban becomes practical, other methods must be used to reduce usage, and economic interventions like taxes, alternative energy incentives, and properly-designed carbon markets have proven effective (though that last seems pretty hard to get right).

I guess we disagree on how well taxes, incentives, and carbon markets have done. II think that most of the wins we got have come from more direct interventions like building public transport (NY & Amsterdam vs Houston or Montreal) and replacing carbon based grid power.

..the skepticism... Basically, the majority of “interventions” are based on price. Higher prices, lower consumption. That’s the economics assumption in a nutshell. The reason I think that this is flawed is “demand elasticity.” We know fuel demand to be “inelastic” meaning that for any change in price, consumption will change very little. To cut consumption by 25-50%, prices will need to increase a lot, more than feasible in a normal political situation. Fuel consumption is inelastic in the medium-long term, very inelastic in the short term.

Fuel is often used as a literal textbook example (along with cocaine) for this concept.

The only way to change the elasticity is alternatives. The economics of encouraging the invention of alternatives is.. well.. “theory” in the pedestrian sense of the word. Academic ideas that are debated without much resolution. This part is not like the first part (elasticity), which is well understood. So, these interventions might work for creating alternatives, but I dunno.

In any case, it looks like alternatives have appeared (regardless of how we think they got here). So, lets cut the BS, trust ourselves to assess the viability of these alternatives , pick winners and go for a 10-20 year phase out culminating in a near total ban.

Conceptually, I’m arguing against the idea the economics-based policies should be abstract, general policies that could apply to carbon, sugar, makeup or anything. I’m saying look at this specific market. Picking winners in 2018 is a lot less risky than picking winners in 2008, when EVs or mostly solar grids were still unproven. If we determine that alternatives are viable (I think we are just getting there now) then pull the trigger, ban carbon fuel.

Changes to fuel costs aren't totally inelastic. The problem for altering consumer behavior is:

1. The decisions that change fuel consumption - what car to buy and where to live/work - are taken infrequently, and so make feedback slow.

2. People are bad at weighing costs that don't show up in the sticker price. This is addressable and addressed through incentives applied at the time of purchasing a car rather than purchasing fuel.

Issue 1 also applies to business users (automotive and industrial alike), and is inherent to any big infrastructure transition - even with a ban, you'd still have this long lead time.

Issue 2 is solvable on the consumer side with proper structuring of incentives. Both the American subsidies for electrics and the European punitive taxes on gasoline cars seem effective at changing public behavior, and have made EVs competitive earlier than they otherwise would have been (hence spurring a lot of private R&D money that would not have flowed otherwise).

1. (fuel cost) is the purer version of the carbon tax. In theory (the one behind most of these policies that I'm objecting to), this should be sufficient.

As you say, it's slow. I'd also say that it's no good (due to inelasticity) even if we were willing to wait. Say you could turn the American consumer into a Belgian one in 10 years by doubling petrol prices. They'd still drive a bit more due to cities' structure and the country's size, but in little euro hatchbacks they'd save 25% of the fuel/carbon.

Maybe I'm exaggerating. Maybe we could cut 30% with a 75% price increase. Either way, that's a lot of pain for very moderate long term gain. Most hard hit would be poorer people who can't afford to "upgrade" their car.

I agree on the second point. This is a better policy.

Unfortunately, the European punitive taxes are mostly not upfront or even new car specific. This puts most of the burden on old car drivers, with most of the "elasticity" going towards EOLing cars younger and upgrading to newer ICE cars tailored to this new tax regime. Its a slow, inefficient and regressive, but still preferable to fuel/carbon taxes.

Simpler would be better. €X upfront subsidy or tax on EVs or ICEs. More emphasis on EVs than efficient ICEs as ICE efficiency is not really en route to where we want to go, 0 emissions. Less economic/policy sophistication. Intervene at the time decisions are made (like you say). Build towards a ban.

The policies you're advocating for exist already.

European and Europeanized-country car taxes I know of (Danish, Israeli) do indeed apply at time of purchase - and are altered based on vehicle type. For example, Israeli car purchase taxes are 83% plus VAT, but only 30% for emissions-free vehicles; Denmark, meanwhile, has car registration taxes set at around 100% for cheap cars and 150% for more expensive cars, and varies the tax wildly to promote environmental efficiency and safety (originally EVs were completely exempt from this tax, although there's been talk about eliminating that exemption for budgetary reasons).

This burden is indeed not specific to new cars, but that's necessary to incentivize faster EOL of old equipment (see also the US "cash for clunkers" program, which addressed a similar policy goal); it is, though, completely upfront and extremely transparent to the consumer, and strongly impacts consumer investment decisions.

> while the ban made old equipment impossible to legally service (no replacement CFC!)

The ban was phased, and there was a decade for old equipment to adapt. I think you still can legally go and buy replacement CFC, but I'm not sure if anybody is still selling.

While technology was a necessary condition, it was by no means sufficient to affect wholesale change across industries and the world.

Another comment quotes part of the history of this issue, and it shows that NGOs such as Greenpeace created political cooperation, solving the basic collective action problem (or prisoners' dilemma) at the core of this issue–which happens to be the same for global warming.

The efforts by environmentalists were also instrumental for scientific organisations and the private sector to invest in alternatives. But even with those technical advances, switching would have ordinarily been a losing proposition: the new technology was more expensive, and often less convenient to consumers.

You needed every citizen to willingly inconvenience themselves for the greater good, and you needed assurances that your competitors would not undercut you in the market by continuing to use "dirty" technology.

The parallels to climate change are obvious, and if you remember the fight for the ozone layer as anything but a "crusade by first-world environmentalists and the nanny-state trying to kill our industries", that only shows how well it worked.

A carbon tax seems like more of a simple solution than:

>Try to gradually ban carbon fuels, as soon as viable alternatives make this feasible.

Carbon tax (as well as the caps, subsidies, tradable credits and such that form parts of the plan) are more complicated, I think. Riskier too.

Also, the economic reasoning is (IMO) flawed because in the absence of a viable alternative, we know fuel consumption decreases very, very little with increased costs (that affect poorer people more). If a viable alternative exists, we know that bans work well (e.g. CFCs) and leave less room for policy corruption. The key is viable alternatives. Without them, either policy will probably fail.

"as soon as" will be a long time. There is nothing viable on the horizon to replace carbon fuels in many applications. The energy density of batteries is still far lower than oil.

If we wait until carbon free replacements naturally displace fossil fuels we won't be able to limit global warming to two degrees. Immediate, massive action is necessary to reach that goal. And unfortunately climate change is not something that easily reverts itself like Ozone depletion. A large part of the atmospheric carbon stays there for thousands of years.

I'm no expert, but to me a steadily increasing tax on carbon fuels seems like the simplest and best method to incentivize innovation. You can even incentivize capture technologies by providing a negative tax for all carbon that is safely put back in the ground. By taxing carbon that is pulled from the ground positively and carbon that is put back negatively you indirectly subsidize climate friendly technology without prescribing the shape of the solution.

I’m not sure what you mean by “naturally.” I’m not proposing no interventions, just simple ones like bans.

For example, EVs are starting to look like a viable apples-to-apple alternative across vehicle types. This is partially driven by subsidies and consumer action, but mostly it’s just technology.

With the current pro-environment policy approach, we subsidise them (tax exemptions) at a decreasing rate (until it becomes too expensive because there are lots of EVs), along with some other “interventions” from a complex portfolio of policies. I am saying, do the opposite. (1) Pick winners. (2) Subsidise/tax at an increasing rate (or some other transitional plan). (3) Plan for a near term ban.

Bans were only viable because CFCs were used on only a few niches that could be regulated separately. Good luck trying to discover every use of fossil fuels out there and deciding if it can be replaced.

A carbon tax can make fossil fuels uncompetitive on the markets where it has competitors, and does not require micro analysis of the entire world. Governments can just push higher and higher taxes until it is niche, and then start banning the niches.

Hang on...

The ozone layer is now recovering decades after a ban on CFCs.

Maybe it would just be simpler to ban man made production of CO2? Technology will find a way round I suppose, and it means we can ditch taxes, subsidies etc... win/win!