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Fixing Climate Change: tax drive thru sales
- Thread starter Chan
- Start date
OP
OP
Can't even spell it right probably means you've never been blessed with In N Out.
Had it all the time in Texas.
Now that I don't live near one anymore, honestly a Big Mac gets me about 90-95% of what I liked about In N Out burgers.
If Culver's would start using thousand island dressing then In N Out need not exist.
It isn't though. Electric cars are no eco friendly to build. They're just as bad for the environment as any other car from a manufacturing standpoint. Even if the impact is lower it isn't 0.
Public transportation is considered poor in America thanks to poor funding and treating it like welfare. In countries where it gets proper funding and is meant for everyone it's a superior method of getting around where the majority of people live aka cities.
Depending on the speed of the drive thru line, consider turning off your engine if you'll be stationary for a decent length of time. While parking and ordering inside is more fuel efficient, you can (sometimes) minimize the amount of idling you're doing.
Turning off your car doesn't damage it or waste more fuel vs. idling:
As for the "just go inside" argument, sometimes the drive thru actually is quicker (not backed up 15 cars long). Sometimes going inside is a hassle for people driving young kids around, or the elderly or physically disabled. Or someone with pets in the car.
Turning off your car doesn't damage it or waste more fuel vs. idling:
As for the "just go inside" argument, sometimes the drive thru actually is quicker (not backed up 15 cars long). Sometimes going inside is a hassle for people driving young kids around, or the elderly or physically disabled. Or someone with pets in the car.
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I completely agree, and I get the arguments from an argumentative point of view like... We need more dramatic action than carbon tax / cap & trade (sure, I agree), and I get where people are coming from with like ... being against commodifying pollution, like if you hate capitalism, I get it, you don't want the environmental movement co-opted by capitalists or something... But to me, like, I don't get how "doing nothing" is better than what seems like a practical first step even if it's not sufficient at "fixing" environmental problems.
Emissions trading - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
The strong opposition to cap and trade / carbon tax / emissions trading... I get it from an ideological perspective. I don't get it from a practical perspective, and it's an example of where I diverge from leftists ideologically because it feels like just opposing a first step.
Oh you meant trading carbon. Yeah I'm not for that. I want a hard tax that a company has to pay per x amount of carbon they emit.
Carbon trading sounds like it'd be ripe for abuse or just allow big companies that can afford to deal with them have an unfair advantage.
It's fun playing the "which is faster" game because some franchises really hammer on drive thru times and prioritize them above all else. There could be 15 cars in line and 3 people inside and it'll be "fuck you, nobody cares about carry out times".
But it would impact that demographic more than say, upper middle class. No one is 'forced' to use the drive thru, but those that do use it, whether for convenience or other factors, are disproportionately middle class or lower.
OP
OP
You deserve to have the worst 13-3 team of all time. Literally you deserve nothing but sadness.
Yeah, this. Instead of micro targeting individual behaviors, where you'll always be missing something, and where people are going to tend to target behaviors in a kind of classist way (see: fast food being where you first go to target your climate change ire), hit the issue at the broadest point you can. Tax the pollution itself, not the individual polluting behaviors that most bother you.
I would be way more suspicious of cap and trade if it hadn't been so successful at containing acid rain. I can see all the ways where it seems like it would be weak to exploitation, but the instance we have of it being put into practice, pretty much none of that happened.
But the result would be the same. The top polluter is the guy selling you the hamburger and the gasoline. So either you assess the tax and collect the money as government revenue, or you go after the polluter himself, and he raises the prices to compensate at collects the money as profit. The tax will ultimately do more good.
It's pretty easy to come up with leftwing arguments against it. "Oh, so the rich can just pay to pollute?" "Capitalism, but for pollution??" For a certain brand of leftist, carbon taxes are a distraction from the real goal of massive government projects to built solar arrays and wind turbines and train networks.
This is almost assuredly trolling, but you do realize that the cows themselves are a major climate change contributor, right? The beef itself is as much a problem as the gas to get there.
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Oh, also bad around here are people who leave their car running outside when they go into a store "because it's cold out." When you're only going to be in there like 5-10 minutes, neither your engine nor your inside temp is going to cool down that drastically. You don't need it to be 75F inside the moment you jump in the car. (It's not like getting into a car that's been sitting outside all night.) Plus it's a higher theft risk. Some cities have laws against leaving a car idling unattended, but it's not really a concept in small towns.
If paying a bit extra at a drive thru is enough to effect someone, I'm sure they'd be fine saving that money and ordering inside. Though buying fast food is a poor financial decision anyway, but that's a different argument.
Folks would still drive and park in the lot, idle while someone or themselves went in to order. Fast food tax in general would be more effective. Well, maybe not because people do Uber eats and grubhub and shit and that has ridiculous delivery costs that I can't fathom how most people swallow it.
OP
OP
If you're dumb enough to leave your car running unattended your insurance company will not cover you being a moron.
Well I assume most of the time these are locked (by key fob), so someone would still have to break in to steal it, but it's still more of a target for theft than a locked car with no keys in it. (Or at least not in the ignition.)
You're a genius. Tell it to people who can barely afford to live with their income that have to do drive 2+ hours every day.
I'm ok with what the OP is proposing, but the fact of the matter is that the American lifestyle has become use to this. The notion of getting in your car, burning fuel, and then waiting in a line of cars to get burgers that also further contributed to climate change... is absurd. Cheap gasoline and fossil fuels allows this to happen. We need to raise fuel prices. Like triple or quadruple them. The car, and the meat will then become far more expensive and people will be forced to find more efficient means. Yes I realize this screws over poor people.
I mean, not people who don't have cars, but a significant number of the working class population that is living pay check to pay check owns vehicles of some sort (usually out of necessity due to the absurd travel most Americans have to do for their jobs) and they often rely on fast food. It won't effect the absolutely most impoverished people because they're not buying fast food most of the time and certainly not from a vehicle most of the time, but it's not going to impact the rich at all and it's not going to impact a lot of the middle class America that can also more easily choose other out to eat options or afford healthier alternatives to fast food.
But just don't use the drive thru. Fast food places have parking lots, where you can park your car, and then go inside and order.
Is this hypothetical tax JUST on fast food places or any drive thru? We've got pharmacies, banks, dry cleaners, even "Brew Throughs" where you just buy alcohol or other convenience store items by driving right through the middle of the store and pointing out what you want from the coolers on either side. Literally no store to even park and walk inside as it's vehicles-only.
You've got to put a price on pollution somewhere. My province charges $.03 per litre to price the carbon (which is still too low). Frankly, it's not just the wasteful uses that we need to disincentivize, we need to dramatically reduce carbon pollution wherever possible. If it's low income earners that will be disproportionally affected by a gas tax, give the money back in tax rebates, or use the budget for infrastructure and take less tax from incomes. And if people are driving 2+ hours a day for less than a living wage then it's essentially corporate welfare that's propping up the low gas prices without the cost of pollution factored in.
I'm not saying its some magical boom-climate-change-solved kind of thing because there is obviously a political problem intertwined here, but we really do need to lay out a plan to globally price carbon with a predictable ramp to get the economics to move away from from cheap dirty energy.
Poor people often have less time, they might have 2 jobs or kids they can't afford to get babysitters for. This is a big reason poor people get fast food.
Are you being intentionally thick?
OP
OP
Taxing carbon isn't going to do anything. We already saw this in France where people who need to get to work every day and have to buy gas will just riot instead of staying home. Same thing w/ drive through. If I am hungry and in a rush I am still going to pay the .50c or whatever you tack on.
So how does ordering at the counter for take out change this vs going through the drive thru? Going inside to order can often take less time if the drive thru is long.
50% of any vehicle particulate emissions are from tire on road friction.
Electric vehicles are not a cute, but a temporary mitigation. A diesel bus is way greener than a ev.
I pretty much always go inside, it is so much quicker. Plus in case they mess up your order you can easily get it fixed before walking out.
Non-exhaust PM emissions from electric vehicles
Particulate matter (PM) exposure has been linked to adverse health effects by numerous studies. Therefore, governments have been heavily incentivising…
www.sciencedirect.com
So it's a disabled and elderly tax on all the people who have difficulty getting around?
I don't know what you want me to say. Any tax on any business will inevitably hit someone that people consider "unfair". Especially if climate change is the thing you're trying to tackle.
OP
OP
Dividending back the carbon tax received from emissions is a great way to get around the impacts to vulnerable populations and the poor.
Can they run all of the computers and scanners plus basic car functions for 10 hours straight?
Yeah easily. If you sit parked in Model 3 for example, I know from experience, with the air and electronics running at most it might drain 2% an hour or so. There's lots of police stations out there already actually purchasing Model 3 and saving money already because of the lower fuel costs.
Tesla Model 3 gets the nod from police over cost and performance, bye-bye Dodge Charger
The Bargersville, Indiana, Police Department is updating its fleet to Tesla Model 3s after they figured out that they will...
electrek.co
Police Department Adds 2020 Tesla Model 3 & Explains Why - CleanTechnica
When asked why he chose the Tesla Model 3, Police Chief Foti Koskinas says he "believes in being green." However, the car's unmatched performance for the money, its 5 star safety rating, and top-of-the-industry collision avoidance technology also played a factor.
cleantechnica.com
Or just tax the rich and pass legislation that forces companies to comply with environmentally friendly standards.
You can do this too if you want OP but let's make the actual entities responsible for this.... Ya know.... Responsible for it.
You can do this too if you want OP but let's make the actual entities responsible for this.... Ya know.... Responsible for it.
OP
OP
User warned: Hostility
What the hell do the rich and corporations have to do with your choice in being lazy and sitting in drive-thru traffic? Sorry that they give you the option of doing it but you chose the irresponsible lazy choice.
You have a van full of screaming kids, you're not going to drag them into the McDonald's so they can have their happy meals.
Pretty sure companies are much more responsible for climate change then any group of individuals, whether they are running trucks all over the country for deliveries or dumping waste in improper places. Taxing people going through the drive-thru isn't going to do much, like I said you can still do it but the bigger problem is big companies having a ton of political influence that they use to protect themselves from logical legislation because it would cost them more.
You're basically blaming climate change on people going through the drive-thru, which is a pretty insane stretch. They certainly aren't helping but your proposed solution doesn't even come close to the root of the problem.
By your same standards we should just get rid of fast food or drive-thrus as a whole, fast food relies heavily on the cattle industry which is a large contributer of co2 and why tax when getting rid of them is a much more logical solution then just having them pay an extra few cents
OP
OP
That's the problem, feed your damn kids actual food. Way to be irresponsible!
Easier to do if there is a stay at home parent that has the time/energy to cook their meals at home. Unfortunately for many they do not have that luxury.
tbf, it takes less time and money to put together some sandwiches than it does to stop at a drive thru.
Carbon tax is the answer.
We've found that emitting greenhouse gases destroys our way of life. It is really no different than fines for littering or polluting waters and needs to be sold as such.
We've found that emitting greenhouse gases destroys our way of life. It is really no different than fines for littering or polluting waters and needs to be sold as such.