Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I'm unsure how you would go about doing that. You would somehow have to be able to assess the carbon emissions of every company. This gets quite difficult, because you have to start answering questions such as "do we count the carbon emissions of the individual employees?" It might seem like a silly question, but this could have an impact on which types of businesses people invest in.

It would probably just be easier to have a general carbon tax that gets paid back to people. Then separately you could have a UBI paid for by capital gains taxes or something along those lines.

But somebody else probably knows more about this.



Economists distinguish between three scopes of emissions https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/06/20/how-much-can-f...

It gets complicated as direct taxation just encourages moving the dirtiest link in the supply chain offshore.

E.g. manufacture tire in the US and be subject to a high emissions tax, manufacture them abroad and then import them into US - and you're golden.


Could you not solve that issue with tariffs?


> You would somehow have to be able to assess the carbon emissions of every company

And then map that to every stock, bond, loan and asset.


Do they not already have to report emissions?


I work for a fintech startup. I'd be very surprised if we had to report emissions. Yet, we are definitely a method for the rich to get richer through investments. And we currently benefit from a particular kind of carbon footprint - somewhat indirectly.


No but they may have to declare that they have nothing to declare or those who do need certain kinds of operatimg licences that your company doesn't. Obviously they know who's running refineries, paper mills and things like that.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: