Energy is expensive because burning fossil fuels is expensive due to taxes. A coal power plant pays around two times more for emissions than for the coal itself. They're trying to solve a problem which they have created themselves in the first place.

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embedding-shape 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

So you suggestion is to remove the taxes and go back to mostly using coal for power? Or what's the suggestion here? Because those taxes are there because of the pollution, so unless you have better way of getting rid of the pollution yet using coal for power, I'm not sure there is something better than trying to tax it away so other source can be focused by business and industry instead.

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mono442 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Capping the price of CO2 emissions at a more reasonable level like 10 - 20 euro/t CO2 just like it was 10 years ago could be a decent compromise.

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embedding-shape 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Decent compromise to what? The group who want to pollute the world because it's cheaper? Doesn't sound like a compromise many of us would want.

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mono442 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Countries outside European Union don't care about global warming anyway. It's a futile policy.

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dariosalvi78 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

that is simply untrue. China, for as bad as it has historically been in terms of environment, it has invested waaaay more than anybody else in clean energy [1]. It's a game we are all in together and things are moving forward, albeit too slowly.

[1] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/annual-invest...

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Swenrekcah 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You might be interested to learn that both of those statements are very wrong.

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embedding-shape 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So? Countries outside of EU don't always care for human rights or other things we find important.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't still aim for the values we stand for.

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mono442 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Global warming is ultimately a global problem. It doesn't matter if you reduce your CO2 emissions if others aren't following.

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piva00 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It does matter to follow through with your values though. Humanity isn't supposed to be just minmaxing economical output, a common set of values that we strive for is much more inspiring than burning everything to the ground, and leaving a world of ashes for future generations to capture maximum economical output right now.

I don't think it's a hard mindset to understand, giving up because others aren't taking it as seriously is the cowardly way to go about it. It's much more meaningful to show it can be done, help to scale technologies to become cheaper and more accessible for poorer countries, and inspire others with examples that it can be done so action can spread.

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embedding-shape 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Indeed, but if everyone starts thinking "No one else is lowering their emissions so why would I?", how are we supposed to ever make any sort of progress?

Someone doing something is always better than no one doing anything, can we at least agree on that?

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mono442 6 hours ago | parent [-]

But it is by no means obvious that carbon taxes are the right path. Targeted investments in low-emission energy sources might work better.

	▲	embedding-shape 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Fair point, I agree, that isn't obvious. What is obvious to both of us (I assume?) is that pollution has to be lower, not just in the EU, but across the world. But we (Europeans) can mostly just influence what happens inside of Europe, EU and our countries. Hence, we do what we can to reduce it, where taxing it is one approach. With that said, more investments into other energy sources are totally welcome, and I don't think that should mean we also need to tax pollution less, we can have both :)

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paintbox 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Energy is expensive because fossil fuels are destroying the only planet we have.

If a person is taking lifesaving medicine that unfortunately makes their skin itch, you wouldn't call itchiness "a problem which they have created themselves in the first place"...

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dv_dt 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That is a dubious claim of the accounting chain for expense of fossil fuels, which also ignores defensive tariffs for energy sources like Chines manufactured solar, wind and batteries. Though maybe it speaks to more beaucratic process around the energy not the core energy costs itself.

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yread 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And how pays for the healthcare that's indeed for the people downwind of that plant? How much does lung cancer treatment cost compared to coal?

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ViewTrick1002 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Europe is energy poor. We will never be able to compete on raw cost with the US, China and similar.

Our path forward are through renewables, which today are vastly cheaper than fossil fuels.

We decide the speed of the transition to green cheap energy by how much we tax fossil fuels. Low taxes = slow transition. High taxes = fast transition.

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mono442 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't believe this is true. The US has also seen a big growth of the renewables in recent years and they have managed to do it without carbon taxes.

	▲	ViewTrick1002 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That tells you how cheap renewables are today, especially when American energy markets generally are more monopolistic in structure. The faster we get off fossil fuels the better. The growth in the US is much smaller than Europe, except a few cases like California.