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Report: Taxing fossil fuel extraction could raise nearly $1 trillion for climate aid
(www.motherjones.com)
this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
199 points (98.1% liked)
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Cool. But until you actually do something about the producers, it's just a giant bandaid for a gushing mortal wound. It stems the tide, but you're still bleeding to death.
Their money is a big part of their power. We need some wedge in there to be able to take more and more of their power away eventually. What's still happening right now is that they extract money from society and use a small amount of that to pay dividends to people with political/judicial power.
In that sense: Taxing exploration and extraction can be a gateway for more, including criminal justice. But we do need to get over that initial hump.
It can... but it won't. As the other commenter said, they'll just squeeze the money out of other parts of the supply chain. Either by going even cheaper on safety and emissions (causing more problems) or squeezing their workers out of money.
These companies have decades, if not centuries, of practice in ensuring they can maximize their profit in any way possible. Taking a nibble here and there isn't going to do shit for the overall problem.
To say nothing of the fact that if we tax these companies more, they’ll just raise their prices to cover it, which effectively means you and me will be paying the taxes, not them.