Comment by zamfi
3 years ago
Of course a literal tax is politically infeasible, not least because we're not at all serious about actually internalizing the currently-external cost of carbon.
But it's a mistake to consider a tax as something we can't afford because we are already incurring this tax bill by emitting the carbon in the first place. Whether we pay now to reduce the carbon or later to reduce the carbon and mitigate impacts, we will all be paying.
And I agree: imposing this tax today as a flat "usage" tax would be political suicide, but we have many levers that are far more equitable -- tax-and-dividend programs in particular have a lot of history.
From a purely rich western perspective it seems likely to me that OTHER people are going to pay much more than "the west" is going to: Wealth provides buffer against food shortages, lethal outdoor temperatures and sea level rise alike, and the regions that are going to suffer the most are also probably gonna be more like Bangladesh than Central Europe...
If your voters in general are not willing to pay the price for the damage they cause, what is a democracy supposed to do? Sad state of affairs.