If even France can't stick to a gas tax, we're doomed

[Recursion]

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/04/france-fuel-protests-government-to-suspend-fuel-tax-reports-say.html

If even the country that pays the most lip-service to climate change is going to fold the second the bourgeoisie start squealing, there's no hope.

Yes, this tax makes it more expensive to drive a gasoline-powered car. That isn't some unfortunate side effect you can work around; that's the explicit point of the law.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

1. We're doomed anyway

Forget climate change and sea level rise. We'll kill ourselves off long before the really bad stuff happens. Carbon taxes and behavior changes are for impacts that are 200 years in the future. Our next 200 years are "in the book" with the damage we have already caused. No reduction in emissions is going to head off what's on it's way. We can't handle population migration measured in the thousands. What will happen when millions of people are on the move because of drought, famine and war? Climate change will be the catalyst, but human nature and our inability to get along with our fellow man will do us in sure as anything.

[Loki Liesmith]

4. Geoengineering is going to have to happen

Some kind of geoengineering, whether aerosol injection or the like, is the only path I see at the moment.

[Recursion]

10. Great, then we all wind up on a big train cutting our own limbs off

I'd be very careful with geoengineering, personally...

[Loki Liesmith]

12. Oh I agree

It’s the worst possible option.

We’ve precluded most of the good ones at this point.

[marylandblue]

2. Carbon tax increases should be matched by decreases in other taxes

And subsidies for green energy. That was France's mistake.

[Recursion]

9. France is all-in on clean energy

It's true they cut some solar subsidies last year but that was because the producers are doing so well they said they didn't need them anymore. And they make more of their electricity with nuclear than anybody else.

[marylandblue]

14. Then they are doing much more for the environment than we are

I don't blame the French for being upset.

[wasupaloopa]

3. That tax is much like a sin tax.

It punishes you for a certain behavior.

But unlike smoking, people can’t just stop driving their present car and buy a new electric car. The economics doesn’t work.

Now if you used the money to purchase the current cars people drive and buy them a new electric car maybe it would work.

Then again the electric cars need to be comparable to the ones being abandoned.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. Part of the issue may be because France also has a 20% VAT

Interesting article on gas (diesel) prices in the EU - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/03/are-the-french-hit-especially-hard-by-fuel-taxes-protests

Based on the average, the French are paying about US$6.30/gallon (after converting liters to gallons and Euros to dollars and not including the latest increase request).

[Recursion]

11. And it needs to be even higher than that

We have to stop moving people and things around by making hydrocarbons explode and converting about 30% of that linear kinetic energy to rotary kinetic energy.

[blugbox]

19. THANK YOU!!

Just wording it properly conveys what a monumental waste it is. So inefficient while using such valuable Earth resources.

I see it the same as if we were trying to advance whale blubber technology...

[Calculating]

6. Gas taxes are a horrible idea though

They're the very definition of a regressive tax which unfairly penalizes the poor. Meanwhile the rich keep driving their big guzzlers around without a care.

[blugbox]

21. It is a very strange balance.

My father is the superintendent of the road department where we live... and the gas tax is what pays for all road repair.

It's like the more you drive on the roads, the more you are paying to help repair it. Theoretically if you have a gas guzzler, you are buying more fuel, and thus paying more toward the gas tax.

But the gas tax pays his salary and all his workers. I obviously hate the fact we rely on gas still, but there needs to be money to fix the roads. There would have to be some form of general "road tax" or "mileage tax" to offset the gas tax when we switch to electric.

[Recursion]

27. Gas is still cheaper (with the new tax) than when Macron took office

This whole thing is a put-up

[manor321]

7. Exactly. Our species doesn't seem capable of dealing with this issue.

[Calculating]

8. It's because the REAL problem is our overpopulation

And fixing that requires us to go against one of our most core instincts, the drive to reproduce which got us this far. Basically addressing climate change would require us to go against a hard-wired biological drive and implement a global one-child policy.

[Demsrule86]

28. No....totally not true. And we are a free country.

[SaintLouisBlues]

29. Wow, totally not true? You sure convinced me (not)

[Javaman]

13. the interesting part about this is...

most of the people that are directly effected are the farmers.

this was the bone of contention at the start. it has since morphed to something much larger and diverse.

the farmers were protesting the fact that with the rise in the price of fuel, their profit take a massive hit to the point that some of the smaller farms won't see any profit.

that's what this started out about originally.

[Recursion]

16. Farmers and the exurban middle class

Protesting a tax increase and complaining that "other people" get public money that they pay in taxes. Sound familiar?

[Major Nikon]

15. There's more to it than just the gas tax

Tax “reform” in France was a giveaway to the 1%. Now the gas tax increase is seen as taking from the bottom and giving to the top.

[Recursion]

17. Hm. What I mostly hear from the yellowvests is that they don't like paying for brown people's

public housing.

I'm just not going to wind up on their side here.

[FBaggins]

18. I haven't seen that anywhere

It looks to me like the wealthier city population doesn't have to pay much of anything because public transportation is largely green (electricity from nuclear power)... while they don't have a choice (and the key to higher takes on carbon is supposed to be getting people to use less carbon... not to punish people who don't have a choice).

Almost exactly the opposite of your claim in the OP that getting rid of the tax benefits the bourgeoisie.

[Demsrule86]

26. Tax reform was a giveaway to the rich and so we this gas tax...unfair.

[Joe941]

20. Its not just France...

I saw a poll on here that asked if you would give up eating meat to save the environment. The answer was a resounding no! We have to give up far more than we realize if we are save the planet. People want to save the environment without having to "pay" for it. We need to make real changes - and they will hurt. We need to give up automobiles as they exist now. We have to become vegans. We need to live in multi family dwellings instead of single family homes. We all have to live in cities instead of dispersed in the country. A real change has to be dramatic and painful if we want to save the planet. Its not an easy sell is it?

[Blue_true]

22. Macron could have done it differently.

They could have beefed up public trains and buses and implemented toll charges on road travel. The ease of public transport and the tolls should have decreased car use.

Historically, economic shock to implement policy does not work, unless it is done as recovery from a severe downturn.

[Recursion]

23. They have significantly beefed up intercity buses

That was Macron's brainchild back in his last job. Think like MegaBus or Bolt Bus in the US: cheap, no-frills, regular shuttles between cities. (Lyon to Bordeaux is like 15 euros and takes six hours.)

[Initech]

24. The oil companies should just buy our governments and get it over with.

[Demsrule86]

25. First you have to offer an alternative to gas powered cars...people can't afford it and why should

ordinary working people bear the brunt of this while the wealthy use as much gas a they choose...was a bad idea.