Fair enough, let me back up this claim I made:
"Secondly, an ICE car does around $50k damage to health and environment during its lifetime, so there's nothing 'punitive' about taxing them much higher. In fact the equal treatment of ICE cars in many other countries is a hidden subsidy."
I'm basing this figure on the following study from 2015:
If we only try to estimate the economic effect of 3.2 million premature deaths per year which are directly related to vehicle tailpipe emissions, the study comes up with a per gallon of gasoline damage figure:
"Illustrative calculations indicate environmental damages are $330-970 billion yr−1 for current US electricity generation (~14–34¢ per kWh for coal, ~4–18¢ for gas) and $3.80 (−1.80/+2.10) per gallon of gasoline ($4.80 (−3.10/+3.50) per gallon for diesel)."
"These results suggest that total atmosphere-related environmental damages plus generation costs are much greater for coal-fired power than other types of electricity generation, and that damages associated with gasoline vehicles substantially exceed those for electric vehicles."
From $3.80-$4.80 per gallon damages figure we can estimate average per ICE vehicle lifetime damages:
- Average mileage per year is around ~13,400 miles in the U.S.:
- Average fuel consumption per mile driven was around 25 miles per gallon in 2018:
- Average vehicle lifespan is around 15 years in the U.S.:
- The rest can be derived from these figures:
- Average life time mileage of a car is 15*13,400 = 201,000 miles
- Average fuel consumption is 201,000/25 = 8,040 gallons of fuel
- Average life time direct health cost of:
- of gasoline cars: 8,040*3.80 = ~$30,500
- of diesel cars: 8,040*4.80 = ~$38,500
But note that the figures in this 2015 study are conservative, in particular the $3.80-$4.80 per gallon of fuel health damage figure is based on a global average of health costs of:
"Climate-health calculations therefore use a Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) of $1.7 million (for 2010), which is the nominal US-based VSL of $7.5 million adjusted to account for carbonaceous aerosol exposure- and population-weighted country-specific income differences from prior analyses (UNEP
2011)."
That's polite formulation for:
"third world people are 4.4x cheaper for the ICE industry to kill."
If we correct for that factor and price the 'cost of life' in the U.S., we get 7.5/1.7*3.80 = $16.7 per gallon health damage caused by gasoline vehicles, and $21.1 for diesel vehicles, which correct the life time damage figures upwards significantly:
- average estimated life time health damage caused by gasoline cars with U.S. pricing = ~$134,000
- average life time health damage caused by diesel cars with U.S. pricing = ~$170,000
But it gets even worse for the ICE industry, the "premature deaths" related to air pollution do
not include other ICE emissions related damage, such as:
- The already ongoing damage and harm from global warming, such as the 200 billion dollars Hurricane Harvey, which hurricane and rainfall was very probably amplified by global warming into a catastrophic event:
- Global Warming Tied to Hurricane Harvey [Scientific American]
- The direct Hurricane Harvey damages alone would wipe out all ICE industry profits for the last 2 years. ('Triple damages' and RICO punitive damages due to being part of a criminal conspiracy such as the Dieselgate criminal conspiracy would probably wipe out the ICE profits for the last 10 years, for Hurricane Harvey alone.)
- Nor does it include the economic damage caused by rising sea levels that are going to destroy, for example, a significant percentage of current Florida coastal real estate value over the next 30-50 years.
- There's ongoing damage to real estate exposed to vehicle tailpipe emissions in urban environments, with very high depreciation and maintenance costs:
- The 2015 study cites a global "3.2 million premature deaths per year" from pollution alone, which @ReflexFunds recently argued convincingly (with citations) is probably significantly higher in reality, and also in large part caused by ICE vehicles.
None of these costs are included in the estimates above.
That's wrong (see the citations above), and my cautious $50k figure is probably on the lower end of the real costs.
TL;DR: the real per ICE vehicle life time health and environmental damage cost could be several times $50k if we include all these external costs. Most ICE cars do health and environmental damage that are literally several times the value of the car, and even the high ICE taxes in Norway probably don't cover those damages.
