Diesel for agricultural use is subsidised almost everywhere in the west to some degree.

France removed taxes on non-road diesel this year and paid per-liter-subsidies on top.

Keeping independent local agriculture is quite existential for any state, so this is understandable despite being morally questionable in my opinion.

Yes they tried to increase it a few years ago and failed. Farmers came with tractors to Paris..

We noticed. In the 1980s, it was not uncommon to smell/hear a diesel sedan putting around town. It was invariably something like a Peugeot or a Volkswagen.

We should mostly be using trains for long distance transport and electric trucks for last mile transport. Both are very feasible today.

We can get much of the benefit with little of the cost by phasing in a proper carbon tax slowly. Transitions like that can't happen overnight.

Fuel taxes are a good idea in principle but they're very easy to fiddle with as a popularity hack, and so like the US "Debt Ceiling" they become a useless political football. UK governments routinely announce that they are "freezing" their version of this tax because as I said, that's popular even though it's a bad idea.

Agreed.

Interesting fact: If you price CO2 at <$100/ton and assume that (ballpark) 2000 Gt of emissions (starting now) already lead to very severe consequences (this is quite generous), then you are pricing "somewhat intact climate for the next few centuries" at around one years GDP (which is insane to me).

The US has a really good freight train network. Yet there's a good chance the products you discussed didn't use the much more efficient train for the long distance portion of their transit.

Businesses will have an incentive to transport goods efficiently, if the costs are not subsidized by consumers.

Diesel, or rather energy, is also a way bigger part of every single aspect of our modern world. Let's take drinking a can of coke as an example:

First degree: It came into your home from the factory through the shop. 80% product + 20% diesel.

Second degree: Product is aluminum can + water + ingredients. Aluminium came to be a can through 70% refined aluminum + 15% diesel (transport) + 15% electrical energy (pressing the can). Water was pumped locally: free from the ground + 100% electrical energy. Ingredients came from a farm: 80% local product + 20% diesel.

Third degree: Electrical energy came from 40% gas turbines, 30% hydro, 30% wind farm. Ingredients from farms came from soil 40%, 35% nitrogen fertilizer (== gas), 25% diesel (machines)

... and so on

If you decompose everything all the way, the global tally is either matter, which is given to us by nature for free. Or energy; The sources of which being vastly composed of fossil fuels. Fossil fuel prices affect everything.

These fossil resources being finite we can also conclude we're experiencing a centuries-long hay-fire. But hey, we're merely plateauing right now; and most of us won't be here for the harder part of the crash.

And I didn't even mention climate change.

Why does that matter? If you consume more toilet paper and paper towels and lumber, insulation, HVAC, pipes, and electrical components, then you would end up paying proportionally more.

Just because everyone benefits from it doesn’t mean it’s good to subsidize it.

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Actually fuel it’s a good proxy for that: its use is proportional to mileage and weight

> only way we are able to eat affordable food is because some diesel truck is transporting it.

False, if poor people can't afford food, there are already food stamps and various programs in other countries.

This 'affordable' food is causing obesity, a combination of diesel subsidies, agricultural subsidies. Cheap food causes metabolic syndrome, and a range of chronic diseases, which we pay as healthcare, 20% of GDP and the fastest growing sector.

If its cheap food we want, stop ethanol subsidies. All that land (hundreds of millions of acres) can grow very very affordable food.

This foolishness is being repeated everywhere. India started E20 (Ethanol) mandate and price of eggs went up.

Yes, but if you don't tax it correctly you will misallocate resources.

Diesel will get used excessively and you will get more road wear, as the user proposed. If you tax it, you will pay more directly for goods, but as costs rise people will be incentivized to find more efficient transport solutions.

It might still be worth it if road wear is cheap or the predictable misuse is predictable and that saves money somehow, but in all likelihood little harm would come from a fair treatment of diesel vs. gasoline etc. taking into account road wear of each vehicle class. It would be more natural to tax vehicle weight, hours driven etc. directly based on a sound model of societal cost though.

> only way we are able to eat affordable food is because some diesel truck is transporting it.

I would also add to that affordable food is being first produced by agricultural machinery running on diesel, which is then transported by trucks running on diesel on roads build by machinery running on diesel. There is a good youtube video about this from channel driving 4 answers.

Why should food being transported further be subsidized more than locally sourced food?

Cries in actual 2.60/L CAD.

I am feeling it for folks who use oil heat (diesel with different tax structure) in areas where there is no natural gas.

Home heating oil runs at about 75% the cost of diesel. The storage tanks are 275 gallons/1100 litres, so a fill-up, which might happen four to six times in a winter, would be extremely painful right now.

There is plenty of car traffic in NL [1]. Most runs on benzine/gasoline though, not diesel.

[1] https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/longread/rapportages/2026/onderweg-...

I guess you don't want us to complain we are also feeling the effects?

We couldn't and didn't vote the primary cause for this in office, thank you very much.

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deal for he, heel for thee