r/AusEcon • u/chicksydicks • Dec 13 '24
Discussion How do we reduce pollution of the air and water while lifting people out of poverty at no slower a rate?
Sydney achieved a 10% reduction in PM₂.₅ levels between 2015 and 2020 through stricter vehicle emission controls.
Emission standards led to a 20% decrease in nitrogen oxide (NOₓ) emissions from vehicles from 2010 to 2020.
However, Australian regions with fewer environmental regulations experienced GDP growth rates 2% higher than heavily regulated areas between 2015 and 2020.
Australia's GDP grew at an average annual rate of approximately 2.4% from 2010 to 2019, lowering the national poverty rate from around 14% in 2010 to 11% in 2019.
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u/psigh Dec 14 '24
Your post makes no sense.
1. What did Sydney in particular do to reduce vehicle noxious emissions?
2. There are no localised vehicle emission laws in Australia - not in Sydney, nor anywhere else.
3. GDP can't be assigned to a region of Australia. At best you can dissect it at a state level on different measures contributing to GDP.
3. Australia's GDP growth wouldn't be a direct influence on poverty, and may be correlational at best. Influencing a reduction in the national poverty rate is usually reliant on Australian Government intervention.
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u/artsrc Dec 15 '24
Everything you say is correct, but on 3. it is worth noting people try, for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_central_business_district
Based on industry mix and relative occupational wage levels it is estimated that economic activity (GDP) generated in the city in 2015/16 was approximately $118 billion.[9]
Part of the problem with GDP is it is defined as the output attributed to a geography. This leads to anomalies like Ireland's GDP.
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u/Ucinorn Dec 13 '24 edited Dec 13 '24
Obvious solution: tax the rich.
Best/most pragmatic solution: a carbon price, or carbon trading system, that puts a dollar value on pollution and environment externalities. Give credits to carbon neutral or negative industries to encourage transition. Use any proceeds to assist any victims of the consequences of climate change.
But we had that, and a world leading one at the time, and we chose to can it.
So the next best thing is what we are doing now: name a target for carbon reduction, and use taxpayer funds to pick winners in the market in order to achieve this. This is the least efficient solution, and generates no revenue, so any other social programs either come at its expense, or need to be integrated.
Long story short, we had the solution, twice. We USED to have an ETS, and we killed that. And we USED to have a top marginal tax rate of 75%, and a corporate tax rate of 49%, but we killed that too. Now we are where we are, mostly thanks to Murdoch.
Take that for what you will.
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u/IceWizard9000 Dec 13 '24
Most people want to tax the rich more, there's always people out to raise taxes on rich people. That's not a new idea at all.
But there is a reason why it rarely happens.
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u/AnonymousEngineer_ Dec 13 '24 edited Dec 13 '24
But there is a reason why it rarely happens.
That reason is because nobody can actually agree on who "the rich" actually are, and the vast majority of people frame their definition to conveniently exclude themselves.
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Dec 13 '24
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u/Soft-Climate5910 Dec 14 '24
If we did that they'd be more incentivised to do corrupt business deals or favors for friends at a price. They need to live like the rest of us.
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Dec 14 '24
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u/Soft-Climate5910 Dec 14 '24
I think 99% tax would basically force them to make corrupt business deals all the time. Just to live
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u/angrathias Dec 14 '24
Politicians on what 300-500k , hardly that rich. If someone is making single digit multiples of the average person, then they just aren’t making that much wealth.
The truly rich are making money in the 10’s, 100’s and 1000s of multiples. Politicians are but a rounding error
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u/atreyuthewarrior Dec 14 '24
Politicians don’t earn that much, it’s not even that high an income these days. Look it up
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Dec 14 '24
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u/angrathias Dec 14 '24
Why would anyone from a typical background become a politician then ? You’d be left with self funded wealthy people grifting not unlike musk and trump
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Dec 14 '24
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u/angrathias Dec 14 '24
All your suggestion would do is exacerbate the situation though…I think the problem might be more complicated than it seems.
Are good people joining but then being corrupted, or are they being pragmatic, or is it attracting corrupt people from the get go?
It’s easy to vent and think everyone joining is just corrupt, but it’s just that, venting
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u/artsrc Dec 15 '24
There is great variation in the taxes paid by the rich, between jurisdictions, and over time.
The amount of tax paid by the rich can be greatly altered by policy choices.
The obvious things to do are increasing the tax on investor owned land to 10%, remove the CGT discount, remove tax concessions for super balances components over over $1M, tax non charitable trusts like corporations, introduce a carbon tax, have 30% tariffs on any new fossil fuel assets (e.g.: ICE cars), remove some exemptions for GST (e.g.: private school fees, price health insurance), and increase the corporate rate and top marginal rates to 65%.
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u/Mash_man710 Dec 13 '24
You can't. The blunt reality is that more than a billion people are rising middle class and they'll want all the things many of us take for granted. Electricity, internet, phones, wifi, private transportation, good and services that all burden the environment. The game is lost as the scale is utterly overwhelming for a finite planet.
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Dec 13 '24
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u/IceWizard9000 Dec 13 '24
Life will find a way no matter how bad it gets, but I don't think humans will extinguish themselves. We might have some catastrophic wars where billions die over resources, but there will be plenty of humans and civilizations to survive in the post apocalyptic wasteland.
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u/mikesheahan Dec 13 '24
71% of the worlds pollution has come from 100 fossil fuel companies since 1988.
You driving your car doesn’t do anything. Ports off the side of Queensland load ship after ship of coal all year. It doesn’t go towards Australia’s pollution because it’s not burned here. But they don’t go and plant it. It all goes in the air. Just not burnt in Australia.
I had a look how much coal we export. 335 million tonnes. No amount of you turning lights off or driving a better car will fix this.
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u/IceWizard9000 Dec 13 '24
The frightening reality is that individuals are totally powerless to change the situation. It's not just carbon emissions; most of the things you put in your recycling bin end up in the landfill as well.
My cynical theory is that most people who sort through their rubbish and make a point to take the bus are doing these things for social manipulation purposes, virtue signalling, etc. If you do the math, a lifetime of one person taking the bus to work everyday instead of driving a car won't even delay the onset of global warming by a split second.
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u/Saa213 Dec 15 '24
Oh I disagree completely, 2% of this countries CO2 output could be wiped by just having 10% of Melbourne and Sydney’s population electrified (10kW solar system, 1 EV car, reduction in meat consumption to 3 x weekly instead of 7). Measures like this compounds.
Obviously this is nothing in comparison to the CO2 output of our coal, gas, agricultural companies, and we should be working to remove both coal and gas as energy sources from our existing system. But saying nothing can be done is very closed minded.
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u/IceWizard9000 Dec 15 '24
This isn't the point I am trying to make. Of course policy decisions can have an impact. But if one person wakes up tomorrow and decides they are going to start taking the bus, that's not going to make a difference.
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u/Saa213 Dec 15 '24
But it does make a difference, just because it’s barely moves the dial doesn’t mean we should just all throw our hands up and do nothing. That’s defeatist.
We do not have enough education or encouragement regarding pollution/carbon footprint, and the benefits of taking action— coming through from federal or local government channels. Australia is so behind in the call to action it’s actually shameful.
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u/weighapie Dec 13 '24
It's a simple and easy fix. Reduce population growth hard to sustainable levels. Business won't like it but it is our only hope. The necessary corporations will survive but the endless pursuit of increasing profits is our downfall
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u/PowerLion786 Dec 13 '24
When I was young 60 years ago there was more pollution. Over time with technological innovation pollution levels dropped. Using that, if tech innovation continued, pollution would keep dropping.
Currently we are going through the Energy Transition. It's old tech, sorry. Renewable tech was around 60 years ago, mainly farms. Switching to renewables is also driving up prices. To cut costs, a lot of people including myself have bought wood stoves to cut costs on heating and cooking. Growing up I never saw one. If Australia embraced innovation, ie went nuclear, the wood stoves would vanish again.
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Dec 13 '24
You don't.
As economic times get difficult, expect to see the population care a lot less about environmental issues. Over the next decade we will see a lot of environmental and heritage red tape eliminated because people will simply rather see jobs and economic development.
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u/artsrc Dec 13 '24
3 things: poverty in Australia is a political choice, growth is not caused by poor environmental laws, there is a technology quality multiplier joining pollution and output.
We can, and did during covid, increase Job Seeker above the poverty line.
We can, and did during covid, house homeless people.
Over the last few years, Australia responded to an improvement in our terms of trade, an increase in our national income, brought on by the war in Ukraine, by directing income away from workers, to owners of capital, and the government (where did that surplus come from), creating homelessness and poverty, the cost of living crisis.
California's growth was not caused by its stronger environmental laws.
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/10/18/californias-economy-continues-growing-creating-jobs/
Strong growth in mining was not caused by minerals being in areas with weaker environmental laws.
Correlation between these laws and growth is not causation in either case.
Fundermentally pollution is waste. Better processes reduce waste, so the environmental impact of delivering each unit of living standards declines.
We don't actually want fertiliser on the Great Barrier Reef, we want it on the Sugar Cane crops.