[danieltillett]

No you are right. The basic problem is it is much easier to block something new than bring in something new. By trying to fight the owners of carbon you are giving them all the power, because they will find it much easier to block a carbon tax than you will find introducing it. More fundamentally there is no good reason why most of the cost should fall on the owners of carbon rather than the whole community.

The cost of buying out Exxon and co would not be too bad given we can't stop burning carbon today and any change will take 20 to 30 years. We can basically buy an option today on the carbon to be produced 20 years from now and this should be much cheaper.