Comment by ajuc

In many countries oil is taxed at over 70%. If oil prices grew by let's say 50% - these countries can lower the tax and consumers wouldn't even notice.

There's no excuse for ignoring external costs - these costs are real and paid by everybody while profits are gathered by only a few people.

It's deeply unethical but more importantly irrational - people profiting from the fossil fuels have no incentives to fix anything if they aren't forced to deal with the external costs.

Currently the system is - they get the profits and everybody pays for external costs. That makes alternatives to fossil fuels less attractive because you will pay "petrol tax" anyway in taxes spent on all the external costs, even if you don't buy any fossil fuels ever.