There's been since a long time a framework in place to punish cars with higher CO2 emissions via road taxes.

This was the case in Geneva recently (https://www.bluewin.ch/en/news/motor-vehicle-tax-in-geneva-causes-frowns-and-anger-2452758.html) and it's also the approach that Vaud takes. The principle is that your road tax is increased if your car's nominal CO2 emissions are higher than a threshold.

I believe this is just virtue signaling at best, and vote harvesting at worst. It does not account at all for _actual_ emissions of the car at all.

My former boss – as an example – had a BMW X5 with a V6 hybrid and paid very little road tax but could never recharge it (he lived in a rental), and drove it regularly to work. Teslas also paid very little road tax, despite generating a lot of CO2 on production (I have one).

In my opinion a better way to tax is to really go at the emission source: the fuel pump. Tax it in a way that higher usage, which generates higher CO2, will then result in a higher cost for the person. I usually hear rebuttals about businesses having to increase their prices as a consequence, but that's the price to pay for an effective CO2 policy. If your business generates more CO2, then you pay more – it's as simple as that. It will be up to you to then move the cost down to the consumer, who will then have – finally – to make an informed decisions.

On the same line, concrete should also be taxed in the same way as this is a country where people tear down perfectly good houses from the 80s to build new ones without caring about the environmental cost (1 ton of concrete = 1 ton of CO2, and for those who don't know Holcim generated 0.42% of all global CO2 since 1950).

The additional tax collection can then be used to fund subsidies for free PT, bikes, carbon capture or other ways to actually curb CO2 emissions.

Disclaimer: I am not an environmental party supporter, but it irritates me to see so much greenwashing and ineffective policies.

by love_weird_questions

4 comments

  2. Perfectly good house from the 80’s is a really funny thing to say when you see how inefficient most of our buildings are. 

    But still, if you look at statistics:

    https://www.bafu.admin.ch/bafu/en/home/topics/climate/state/data/greenhouse-gas-inventory.html

    You can see that ⅓ of our greenhouse gas emissions are from the transport industry and that part has been growing over the years especially as we’ve renovated our buildings from a period where resistance heaters and burning more oil was the way to go through a harsher winter than what we have now. 

    Additionally cars are a major source of additional pollutions like:
    – noise
    – microplastics (the main source of them is car tyre dust, something electric car contribute more)
    – landscape
    – additional pollutant like ozones and micro particles. 

  3. >In my opinion a better way to tax is to really go at the emission source: the fuel pump. Tax it in a way that higher usage, which generates higher CO2, will then result in a higher cost for the person.

    In an ideal way of rational, well-informed people, that would work. When choosing a car, people might factor the few cents difference in tax at the fuel pump (in addition to the increased cost for fuel itself) as less than the road tax difference.

    If we assume a free market as in “economics 101” (hard to translate university modules to English), then you’re absolutely right. But people are… well, a little stupid. I cannot tell you that the current solution is the ideal one. Fuel and energy saving incentives are much older than the CO2 debate. There’s probably historical data on what makes people use less energy and what doesn’t even if it rationally *should*. 

  4. It is absolutely perfect for a radical chic place like Geneva: you pay less if you have a 200k Porsche Cayman Plug In Hybrid than if you have a 2012 VW Polo.

    The law has been proposed by the same people who have decided to install gravel all around the new CEVA train stations in Geneva – making it very uncomfortable for anyone with a trolley to roam around the station. Its a small think but it never does NOT make me laugh because I imagine politicians who legiferate for the masses from the interior of their Bentleys. Quintessential Swiss and quintessential Genevan.

    I tried to argue about this in r/geneva in the past and there were people genuinely defending the system and thinking it’s fair.

    The way I see it people are on average simply too dumb to understand what’s science-based regarding climate change. After all, the average person thinks GMOs and Nuclear power should be banned when they are two of the most powerful technologies we have to actually flight climate change. People simply like to believe that buying a hybrid car and chewing on paper straws saves the environment. Let them.

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