- Only 57 fossil fuels and cement producers have been responsible for most of the world’s CO2 emissions since 2016, according to the Carbon Majors report by InfluenceMap
- Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, and Coal India were the top three CO2-emitting companies during this period.
- InfluenceMap’s database aims to increase transparency around climate change contributors for legal, academic, campaign, and investor purposes.
I might argue that demand for gasoline is relatively inelastic. You can adjust the price quite a bit before people change their consumption habits, simply because transit options are inflexible and relatively small portions of one’s overall budget.
A better alternative might be to invest in mass transit infrastructure - rail, bus, and bike/pedestrian options - that undercut the existing private car market. In cities like Tokyo, London, Moscow, Amsterdam, Shanghai, and NYC, where rail/bus/pedestrian options are abundant and commercial real estate isn’t obligated to accommodate one car per visitor, you have much lower energy consumed per capita and much smaller amounts of waste generated when moving people and material equivalent distance.
We incentivize consumption based on our most cheap and abundant available mode of transit. I might argue that raising gas taxes and funneling that towards new road construction would have the opposite intended effect if your goal was reducing emissions.
That wasn’t my main point. However one of the criticisms of EVs in particular is they don’t pay for road upkeep via gas taxes. While true, gas taxes generally don’t cover maintenance anyway so that’s a weak point. There’s also a minor point that infrastructure that is overloaded or in poor condition does contribute to a variety of sustainability issues, including excess CO2 emissions. It’s definitely not the main point though.
Personally I would want a gas tax mostly targeted to transit or personal mobility but the key point being that it be scheduled to increase every year. Gasoline use is relatively inelastic in that you still need to get places and that may be your only choice, and the gas tax is low enough to not be a decider anyway. However, maybe the threat that it will continue to increase will help drive different decisions for the longer term. This lets us avoid punishing low income people with a large increase, while hopefully having a similar impact on decisions
You could make a very similar argument about 18-wheelers and other super-heavy vehicles. Road erosion scales geometrically to vehicle size, but gas consumption is - at best - linear. So the excess weight of the vehicle is effectively a free rider when you scale up from your Geo Metro to a Hummer.
I mean, shy of a Gas Stalin doing environmental dictatorship shit, I don’t see how this is politically feasible. A gas tax is already fairly regressive. Raising it annually would create a popular outburst with every turn of the ratchet. And you wouldn’t even have the Mega-Corps/Banks on your side, unlike when landlords raise their rents.
Seems like an invitation to riots, not unlike what we’ve seen in Europe and the Middle East.