The Copenhagen meeting has produced an agreement, though it’s more of an “agreement to agree” than a concrete deal. Most of the specifics have been left for later. That’s problematic of course, but not as bad as an agreement on specifics that are too weak to achieving anything. The deal (draft text here has several important elements
* A warming target of 2 degrees
* Commitment by the developed countries to spend $30 billion over 2010-12 and aim for $100 billion a year by 2020 in assistance to developing countries with a particular focus on preventing deforestation
* A technology transfer mechanism
Of these, the most significant is probably the deal on deforestation, which has actual money (or at least commitments) attached. Assuming this happens, it’s an outcome more significant than that of any international conference in the last decade at least. And technology transfer is important in a number of ways, particularly as a countervailing force against the pressure for ever-stronger intellectual property protections.
I’m a bit surprised, in that I thought the payments to developing countries would be one of the hardest issues of all, whereas the biggest single sticking point seems to have been China’s objections to transparent monitoring – the kind of silly national sovereignty stuff that is par for the course at these meetings but usually gets smoothed over and traded away by the end.
The 2 degree target has been controversial, with lots of countries calling for a 1.5 degree target. But it’s important to remember that only a couple of years ago, the Stern Review was focusing on a 550 ppm stabilization target, which would most likely be associated with long-term warming of 3 degrees. If we can get agreement now on a 2 degree/450 ppm target, there’s a reasonable chance, given technological progress, of bringing concentrations back down to 350 ppm or even to pre-industrial levels (about 280 ppm) by 2100 and that trajectory would have a fair chance of avoiding any sustained period of temperatures more than 1.5 degrees above 1900 levels. Even that trajectory implies significant environmental damage, but it minimises the risk of large-scale climatic catastrophes.
The next step is for Obama to push Waxman-Markey through the US Senate. I’m confident he can do this, given sufficient Administration pressure on the Senate (including, if necessary, the threat of ending the minority right to filibuster legislation with 40 votes). And, given that he has put his credibility on the line, I’m at least reasonably confident that he will do it.
Looking at the Australian implications, I imagine the Opposition will say that there was no need to pass the ETS before Copenhagen. That would have helped them if they had elected, say, Joe Hockey as leader, and settled on a position of deferring, but ultimately supporting the ETS. But it’s hard to see that it will do Abbott any good – sooner or later, he has to come up with an alternative to the ETS, and no remotely affordable alternative is on offer.
The big disappointment is that the longer timetable will give Rudd the option of going for a double dissolution in the second half of 2010, based on the abortive deal with Turnbull.
John Quiggin 
@Fran Barlow
it’d be great for the rich because they could go about their business without all those awful poor people clogging up the roads
– I really wish economists would come up with a better way of allocating resources other than the one where resources go to those who can afford the highest price
@Hermit. re coal and China. Most of this coal is being use in the making of steel which goes into things like reinforcing bar for the massive rail infrastructure that is currently being built. It is not being used for eletricity generation. They use their own coal for that.
While China is urbanising the population and building very large numbers of high rise buildings, railways, roads etc they will use more coking coal.
They are making a very efficient urban and inter city rail system but lets hope that the buildings they build from now on are more energy efficient than those build during the previous 15 years.
I don’t think you read what I wrote. And why are you banging on about the Iraq war again? Seriously let it go. We both agree that the Iraq war was a dumb intitative. As in not a good idea. As in a waste of money. As in something that killed a lot of people and should not have happened. Going on about the Iraq war every time you disagree with me is a pretty unintelligent and lame response. Maybe I should mention that Hitler invaded Poland every time I disagree with you. I could you know. Would it help clarify things for you?
The chief G77 negotiator doesn’t seem to think the glass is half full.
What’s Plan B?
Sorry Chris Warren, but you are out by orders of magnitude. The entire GDP of the planet probably isn’t 100 trillion (75-80 trillion is cited). Bad or doubtful debt is probably not more than 20 trillion and perhaps a lot less. The TARP money plus other measures approved in the US were about $1.1 trillion, of which some (perhaps 30%) has been paid back or will soon be paid back.
by the way John, you seem to have a lot of faith in Obama. Have you been following the health care debate? The Senate has finally come up with a health care bill – a bill that fines all Americans if they don’t buy junk “health insurance” from a private cartel with an anti-trust exemption. No cost controls, no public option, no guarantee that their bills will be paid beyond an annual cap, and best of all a sweeping anti-abortion law thrown in the mix. All to get 60 votes and prevent a filibuster.
This is the Senate you expect to save the world’s climate, and this is the biggest Democratic majority that we’ll probably have in a generation. Obama is an empty suit – healthcare was even more central to his credibility than climate change. Meanwhile Sarah Palin leads the Republican Party. It’s utterly hopeless. The only hope in a popular uprising, but unfortunately that’s more likely to come from the teabaggers than anyone else.
@nanks
When resources are scarce you can ration by price or by quota or by administrative fiat.
If you try to overcome scarcity in some commodities then the resources applied also have an opportunity cost, and then you will lower the effective price to all those best placed to exploit it. Cheaper roads mean that those with cars get an advantage over those who can’t afford them. It also means that those selling cars and car parts get an advantage. In our world it means the air breathed by everyone declines in quality because it’s a free tip.
That’s also why we think putting a price on CO2 emissions is a good thing.
Under my proposal, the wealthiest people bid each other up for bridge space and the money can go into developing public transport which all us plebs can use.
For the record, four of the bridges I named are ones I use on a regular basis, and two are used by me on most working days.
thanks Fran I understand your point a bit. I guess that as I have more or less no faith left in govt as anything much more than front of house pr for wealth I think that in practice and in general rich people will pay a price they’ll barely notice and everyone else will get a lower quality of life.
(It never occured to me that you were proposing some special privilege for yourself – that would be completely inconsistent with your posting history as I’ve read it)
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
Godwin! 🙂 🙂
Sorry, every time I see the WWII I think of either Godwin’s Law or “Whatever you do, don’t mention the war!”
Warped sense of humour, I guess…
@gerard
[Warning: may contain dark humour and offensive politics.]
Plan B is to vote in the Liberals for their “strong” border protection! And to book early for holidays over at the Islands, before, you know, it becomes too waterlogged. Move on.
More seriously, if the Liberal’s desired twiddling of the thermostat to toasty^fn1 goes to plan, and if CSIRO, NASA, UN IPPC, CRU and a bazillion other research organisations have it roughly correct, then we must accept that some hard choices concerning some nation states – especially low lying island states – are coming up whether we like it or not.
Wait until the combination of deforestation due to urbanisation – both timber and clearance – and increasing temperatures reach an unholy alliance in South Australia. For example, the Adelaide Hills and the forests to the north and south of Adelaide are being rapidly destroyed to make room for houses. Apart from albedo changes and so on, the loss of these particular ecosystems will lead to changes in cloud formation and precipitation over the Adelaide and hills catchments. At what point the balance of probabilities tips to drier conditions over the Adelaide region, I don’t know, but given the large rise in average minimum temperatures, and in average maximum temperatures, it could be soon.
Footnote 1: “twiddling of the thermostat to toasty”: that is, business as usual (BAU).
@nanks
I understand the sentiment, and share it too, but right now the state, precisely because it does operate this way, allows exactly the thing you fear, whereas if the rights were auctioned off, they would notice the price because instaead of competing with the poor for road space, they’d be competing with the rich. As with the CO2 cap, having a low cap would be key.
And do you think the M2 people would be the least bit happy with this? Nah uh … Many of their patrons would be making other arrangements. Poor Macq Bank …
@Donald Oats
Sorry, bit disjointed between second and last major sections. “Wait until the…” should be “Wait until local problems emerge, like the”
Fran Barlow
Yes, there was an extra zero – snuck in.
Pity you cannot use Whiteout on VDU’s.
@Fran Barlow
Fran, as nanks suggests when the government itself is no more than a front for wealth amd privilege what on earth makes you think a price rationing system on roads is going to see the government take that revenue and develop better public transport which would then provide an alternative method for the poor to get to work? My guess is, the way things are now, they would use the revenue to issue prospectuses and privatise the road itself…and applaud their windfalls (made more so when there is no investment in alternatives and citizens can be hered like so many trapped sheep). Of course the economy would sink and people would end up with more debt and more trouble but thats a minor concern when the government (or its ministers) wont be in power long enough to reap the consequences.
here boys take another little piece of infrastructure.
Why else wouldnt you think that given recent decades behaviour by governments in this country?
Im with Nanks, but unfortunately for Nanks and I, it doesnt help to be right when the government has got it all wrong.
hered should read herded
@Alice
If your standard boilerplate is “the government will simply [fill in preferred horror scenario] then you can’t really comment on public policy at all and you simply buttress the Terje’s of the world
Fran – I’m unique. You can’t make me plural. 😉
@Fran Barlow
Economist like to say that “the resources go to the highest value user” which is another way of saying who will pay the most. John Hewson, for example, is in favour of congestion pricing on the roads, because that way it would clear the roads of all the poor people who are currently clogging them. Also, they could probably use the extra revenue to lower his taxes.
@Fran Barlow
Fran – I refer to the excess application of market driven policy over the past three decades under neo liberal ttrickle down ideologies – JQ has done more than just research the failings of this direction – he has discussed it in depth here – its half the reason we have the mess we now have – quite simply there has been far too much of it. I doubt whether continuing down the same pathway is wise – do you?
I suspect you buttress Terje to push for further free marketisms far more more than I do.
@Fran Barlow
I am not sorry Fran but I am with Nanks on this one; (the increasing price rationing of piecemeal short kilometre sections of once public roadways), not in agreement with you.
Nor should privatised sections be made up of what was once public roadways by the blatant theft of a laneway here and there as has happened in Sydney. This is not beneficial to lower income and middle income earners (the types who will avoid the toll) or business either and not all businesses are large.
There is a public and economic benefit, that is likely to far outweigh the rich slugging it out for a faster more hassle free drive to work (lets face it – the really rich are likely to take their time anyway) in keeping transport infrastructure costs low for everyone. If that means higher taxes (progressive of course) then so be it. We have a non minor inequality problem in as far as gains by the wealthiest to correct anyway.
My stock standard boilerplate is the way it is, to correct for the far too liberal swing to pro market ideologies. If enough people start to think like me and I believe enough are starting to think like me….there willl be a return to some balance in the role of governments…and that is not as facilitator and ad men and sales commission agents for big private sector business over what was once common property.
Sometimes I wonder what side of the fence you sit on Fran, like Nanks.
@Freelander
Yes Freelander – agree. No matter how much they get, the rich want more and so oftenh its wrapped up in the kind of “free market price rationing lower taxes ideology” Fran has fallen for here.
actually I think Fran’s variant is a clever idea – the tax idea is lousy, but I can see the auction thing adds something – at least to the point of being worth a go. Let’s face it, we’re gonna be slugged with congestion taxes anyway, this might better.
Better still is more radical although sadly unlikely – as Fran says, quota or rationing by fiat. Maybe something else.
re congestion taxes they’re just another way of shifting costs to the average person from the people who have made stacks from population increase and property speculation (not that the big end speculates in the same way the low end does)
@Freelander
If you excise the emotional content of your claim, in what senses is it good for “poor people to clog the road”? Are poor people advantaged by this? Not at all — quite the contrary. Would it be better if poor people were able to ride efficient and effective public transport, live closer to where they worked, spend less time commuting, not have to tie up large parts of their income paying for road infrastructure and cars?
I’d say so.
It’s worth pointing out that on Alice’s methodology, the rich always win, which means they must be winning as things stand. Any reform she might suggest could also be contrived to show that the rich will profit because this is hardwired into the system — so really, all she and those who follow her methodology can do is bemoan the lack of public utility in social arrangements.
What she (and you) should show is how despite her/your reservations, a set of public policies could be made to work more equitably given the existing settings. Simply taking pot shots at alternatives may be emotionally satisfying but it’s ultimately futile.
@nanks
Exactly Nanks … you argue that all the funds raised have to be applied either to build quality low cost housing inside the bridge area or used to augment and improve public transport along those routes or build low cost car parks (with housing) just outside the bridge area or dedicated bikeways and facilities for housing bikes and gear.
You give everyone with a licence in Sydney 300 free bridge trips pa which they can use or sell at auction through an RTA site. That’s not enough to commute, but some people might carpool, or make an effort to use PT or cycle.
Simple.
Some sympathy for
Freelander and alice, after watching that heroine of the Left, Penny Wong, trying to slot home blame for the Copenhagen conference onto those pesky third world countries, particularly some in Latin America.
“Let them eat cake”.
@nanks
Nanks – I dont think you realise exactly how radical we have become now. Terje’s world is already here despite Fran suggesting I help buttress a free market ideologist. Think of the old dept of public works which once employed thousands of people and was responsible for just that….public works.
Well it exists no more except as a small shell of nominal individuals within the deot of commerce. It used to hire public engineers, architects, contruction managers, builders, inspectors and workers (in their thousands) in many cases for life.
Now the government runs begging (to be ripped off I might add) by consultant private sector engineeers, consultant private sector planners, consultant private sector architects and at the end of these expensive processes to expensive private sector builders or owners like Macbank.
Public works has gone. It is decimated. In its place so much private sector shenanigans and charlatanry and lawyers that if you think we are getting out of it any more cheaply than when the government once built the barns itself…then you are victim to the lie that there is a halfway measure between public and private construction. There isnt.
Name me the last project the government built from top to bottom with its own employees on its own in this country? Name it?
Already public onstruction no longer exists. It has already been desecrated. Even the repairs of the Pacific Hwy saw the government run to Abignano and likely pay a fortune for the privilege.
That is the real tragedy. Terje’s world of private sector so called ‘public’ construction is already here, but the government trhough its own foolishness cant afford it and give Terje the tax cuts he still clamours for.
@nanks
Nanks I wouldnt fall for Fran’s ideas if I was you. Its more of the same old. Fran has nice ideas about nuclear being cost effective as well…Id suggest to you Fran is alreadyn on Terje’s wavelength.
Fran, I am writing regarding “.. if the rights were auctioned off, ..”. I am aware of some auction pricing literature. However, in the models I know, it is implicitly or explicitly modelled in a ‘real economy’ (ie no financial sector even though dollar signs appear in places). Would you kindly provide a reference where the otherwise ‘standard’ option pricing results are derived from an economy which has a financial sector, characterised by the issuance of various forms of financial securities?
oops, this one went too quickly.
Apologies, I resubmit in a second or two
Fran, I am writing regarding “.. if the rights were auctioned off, ..”. I am aware of some auction pricing literature. However, in the models I know, the institutional environment is implicitly or explicitly assumed to be that of a ‘real economy’ (ie no financial sector even though dollar signs appear in places). Would you kindly provide a reference where the otherwise ’standard’ auction pricing results are derived from an economy which has a financial sector, characterised by the issuance of various forms of financial securities?
@paul walter
Thats pretty pathetic Paul but what do we expext from the industrialised nations trying to do deals that sheet home their big energy sectors interests. Havent we seen the cop out here already?
Furthermore are Fran’s ideas of price auctioning on roads any different from medieaval times when the elites owned the lands and the passage across those lands, equipped by virtue of ownership to levy whatever charges and taxes they wanted to those who needed passage?
What is so damn different about Macbank owning our roads and wanting tolls on them so that only those that can afford to pay the toll get to pass? Elitism at its best and here was me thinking we were more civilised than the great class divides of old europe?
Pardon me – I must have got it all wrong, thinking I was living in civilised more equal modern Australia.
Terje Says:
Some cites here might be helpful, otherwise people might accuse you of just making stuff up as you go along.
It would possibly be worth while to hold a proper full scale enquiry into nuclear power, with input from a broader selection of the industry other than ANSTO. Otherwise it will always be dragged out as the default position to not address energy policy.
Warren Buffett looked at nuclear power in the US, he spent $15M on a study and then pulled out saying it was way too expensive.
@Hermit
The bridging is only necessary through to around 2030, although obviously it would be extended if renewal take up is slower and/or if it made sense to continue with nat gas for economic reasons. I don’t know of anyone making the claim for 80% reduction by 2030 however.
You’ll need to provide a cite. I don’t see anything on Brook’s cite that rebuts the core arguments of Diesendorf.
Obviously, Brook’s disagrees with Diesendorf on nuclear. But as Diesendorf doesn’t include any nuclear at all in his mix this isn’t a rebuttal of the proposal.
@Fran Barlow
Fran – what utter rot – what public spirit do you think exists these days in our governments that you imply “will direct those private fee price rationed road revenues” (which the poor no longer clog) into public services.
A) they wont own those revenues – Macbank or some similar institution owns them.
B) Even if the Govt does earn those revenues (which they wont) – what makes you think our government can construct a barn these days let alone alternative public transport for the poor (perhaps cattle trucks?)
Public services dont exist. Dont you understand that? Its like speed cameras – its starts bringing in money and so they put more and more and more of the damn things up. It becomes a quick fix. Thats the problem. Public services have been privatised and the government just runs from one pps to the other and builds nothing at all. It doesnt even want to run what it does own, even if ot generates good revenue streams.
This is an utter furphy of an argument. After they price ration roads they will price ration other methods of getting to work and Macbank laughs all the way to Macbank and the poor get poorer and end up staying home and planning to rob your house to eat.
Yours Fran, is an obnxoiously elitist argument. I never quite realised how far you have sunk (although I had my suspicions – well founded it would seem).
Why should the poor clog the roads? Because they built them with the sweat of their taxes and their parents taxes and they own them, thats why. They should also clog the roads because they are trying to get to work to earn money to support their families and spend it making our economy function better and rasining all our incomes (yes even the rich’s). The fact that they are clogged is the problem here and your solutionn is paltry, divisive and adds to the problem.
Try reading up on the multiplier and aggregate demand. Try imagining the head of a dog wanting to run without its body being able to keep up with where the head thinks its going. Beware not the person our economy feeds but the person it starves.
@Donald Oats
Yes, I was thinking that Plan B involved building some whopping big immigration detention centers for when some Pacific Islander “illegals” turn up once their countries sink. The Nauruans can be the kapos.
Fran’s argument re congestion pricing falls apart once it is recognised that it’s just a form of monopoly rent extraction. It has nothing to do with either Pareto optimality or Coasian externality pricing.
You know Alice, I can see why you get moderated. I give you a perfect invitation to explain how what you say differs from an extended whine, and you pass. I invite you to explain why your theory of public policy shouldn’t embolden Terje and you evade. You have no account of how the inequities you object to can be remedied and yet you profess to say what side of the fence you suspect I’m on? For pity’s sake!
I, rather more than you, understand well the relationship between the state and the ruling class. It’s not metaphysical as your formulation implies. It’s rooted in the defence of property, but this is not something that presses itself insistently upon its servants and if it were, there would be no hope. There could be none.
Class rule is incoherent and the attempt to consistently defend property thus impossible.
One wants to exploit conflict to open up space for others. Of that you have no clue.
@Fran Barlow
Poor people clog the roads because there are more of them. If congestion pricing happened then because poor people don’t ‘value’ using the roads as much as rich people ‘value’ using the roads it would leave the roads free for the rich. And the revenue could be used to give the rich a tax break. Clearly the rich ‘value’ everything more highly than the poor, because they have more money. Remember that the next time you hear an economist talking about resources going to their ‘highest value use’ or the ‘highest value user’. If you talk about ‘highest value use’ and ‘highest value user’ it sounds much more dispassionate and almost scientific. Isn’t economics wonderful?
This sort of analysis also applies to the third world. Given that they don’t have any money they don’t ‘value’ anything very highly. Consequently, they don’t really require any compensation at all for global warming, which was the thrust of the early offers at Copenhagen. “Here. Have $10 billion and consider yourself lucky!”
It is true that support of public transport is an alternative that would reduce congestion and a congestion tax could be used to support public transport. But if the revenue were wasted for that, where would the rich get their tax cut from? And if you put on a congestion tax, then the poor will either have to take buses or trams or trains or walk. Hence, there is no need for public transport support.
I got a figure of 1 tonne of uranium fuel for a 1 GW IFR reactor per annum from Barry Brook. He shows his working at the comment link below:-
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/12/13/ifr-fad-2/#comment-39839
As a rule of thumb a household requires an average 1kW to operate. That is 1 millionth as much power. So that is where I get the 1 gram per annum figure.
From Barrys article (above the comment I linked) in the second last paragraph he indicates that using lignite coal to produce the same energy as an IFR would require a mass of coal 5 million times greater than the mass of uranuim in an IFR. He got his figures from a Wikipedia article he cites earlier in the article. For our notional home that is 5 million grams of coal per annum. Given that coal is between 1 and 10 ppm uranium and doing the math I arrive at the conculsion that buring the equivalent coal liberates between 5 and 50 grams of uranium per annum.
Thus my claim:-
@Freelander
All you and Alice are saying amihnts to this — all else being equal, rich people do better than poor people
Gosh … who’d a ‘thunk it?
What you don’t explain is how such imequity can be mitigated. Examined by reference to resource flows what I proposed would have given the lion’s share of benefits to relatively less privileged people at the expense of relatively privileged people.
I find it perverse that you seem to think that the state knows and always serves the wealthy in the way that most exacerbates inequity, and yet you seem to be opting for solutions that make it most easy for the state to exercise discretion.
Odd …
TrerjeP #43
What is an IFR?
Cos I was under the impression that, if it is an Integral Fast Reactor, there are none in commercial operation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor
“At present there are no Integral Fast Reactors in commercial operation.”
Fran Barlow,
1. You said somewhere that one can ration scarce resources either by price or by quantity (yes, this corresponds to ECON 1). But queuing is also a rationing mechanism.
2. Any chance of getting a reply to my #30 above?
@Fran Barlow
On Fran’s arguments I agree with you SJ. It is this apalling attitude of well “oh lets go further down market road shall we – if we put a price on roads that will help unclog the roads by removing the poor who clog the roads.” May as well say bugger the poor.
She claims this system will give “the lions share of benefits to relatively less privilieged people at the expense of relatively privileged people”.
Well , who’d a thunk that? The poor now take longer and use more petrol to get to work because they cant afford the roads they once owned as public good (that we once all shared). This is greed and self interest masked as concern, nothing more.
Fails to explain that she relies on the state to administer and divert these resources gains as well (but not to “public” trains is my bet after the fancy price mechanism gets whacked on those as well) yet accuses me of reliance on the state to solve problems.
As Menzies said Fran…..there is no difference between public and private investment. So what is your problem with it? You sit in in the very same boat as Terje Fran, as far as I can see.
JQ, One way to read the outcome is: The world leaders (US and China) have agreed that there is a problem called anthropogenic global warming and that the consequences may affect developing countries more than others. Therefore they offer a side payment of xmillion dollars (without legally binding signatures?) to finance (their) technology transfer.
Question: How can the US offer any ‘side-payment’ without borrowing its currency from China? (How many side-payments are there?)
Question: Is China now a developed country (member of G70) or is it a developing country and therefore does not wish to make the same commitments in 1 month time as the EU and Australia?
Clear outcome in terms of influence of science on politics: Dr (Physics) Merkel won on the “at most 2 degrees C”, Senator Minchin lost.
Fred – true there are no integral fast reactors currently in operation. However there are fast reactors in operation. Also sometimes called fast breeder reactors or simply breeder reactors. Humanity has about 300 reactor years experience with fast breeder reactors so they are not exactly hypothetical. An IFR is just a safer version of a fast breeder.
@Fran Barlow
You also say “You have no account of how the inequities you object to can be remedied and yet you profess to say what side of the fence you suspect I’m on? For pity’s sake!”
You dont listen very well Fran. Im suggesting the Government actually get to and build better public transport now and that the government hires directly its own engineers, architects and labour and gets its act together and unwinds the stripping of the public works departments in the mistaken interests of free market ideologies. It is funded with our taxes and a price, but not an exclusive price and something constructive actually happens (something is built). This instead of the endless and nauseating spin of private sector consulations, plan drawings up, costings, media spin announcements of a new infrastructure project that is in reality only a hideously expensive and wasteful set of paper plans, especially when they are shelved one after the other as in NSW.
The NSW State Govt stands out as the classic example of why not to follow the pps privatisation neo liberal price rationing mechanism model. Because nothing gets done but a lot of hangers on and spin merchants make a lot of money from my taxes doing something intangible that never physically materialises. In the time they have been in office we could have had an efficient pyublic train system built in Sydney but no, all we have to show for it is a few measly toll roads and a bad case of imminent logjam (along with the increased congestion emmissions).
When public objection is so high with NSW Labor and QLD state for its continuing privatisaions and blind market ideology acceptance, its time you and yours likemindeds sat up and listened to those objections. We have had public investment in this country before and its a policy decision (and one that can just as easily be reimplemented as it was abandoned). Id rather not wait for Macbank to deliver after it finally gets the price it wants by price rationing. We will be waiting a long time. We have been waiting a long time.
What difference is a higher price on the roads to a higher tax to construct better public transport options to the wealthy Fran? The roads would still be “unclogged of the poor” as you want – its just that the rich will pay more for the pleasure of the better transport, and the poor still contribute and get to use the roads (but less overall will use them if there is an efficient public train system) and wont be thrown off just so to unclog them for the rich.
That way – all pay according to their ability to pay, there is still a price on the new transport, it happens faster, it provides for the future, and thats a damn sight more equitable and useful and less of a divisive sledgehammer than your price rationing system on existing roads.