[jimmytidey]

Obviously you can question his motives, however this is not an indirect subsidy if you consider the emission of carbon dioxide an externality - which I presume he does. Instead it would represent the levelling of the playing field.

Oil companies do get direct subsidies through tax breaks, so no mater what you think is going on here, energy is not pure market. In practise, how often do you see a pure market anyway?

[merpnderp]

To be fair, in the US almost zero companies pay the corporate tax rate of 35%, the highest in the industrialized world. Thus anyone can point at any industry and point a finger at it in disgust at its "tax breaks".

[jimmytidey]

Fair point.

Still, means a carbon tax is just more of the same, not some evil infringement of liberties.

[nickff]

Something can be an indirect subsidy and a Pigouvian tax at the same time; they are non-exclusive options. I see the carbon tax as both, and am opposed to both.

There are no 'pure market[s]', and there never have been. The 'pure market' was a straw-man invented by anti-market people.

[jimmytidey]

It seems to me that subsidies and Pigouvian tax are exclusive if they are to mean anything. Perhaps I'm wrong?Can you point me at a discussion of this?

I think you are right that few people explicitly say that pure markets exist. But implicitly many people make arguments based on some kind of some unregulated state of nature, for example on this thread.