There's starving kids in Africa. They have it worse than kids in the US but they aren't more than tangentially relevant to a discussion on hunger in the US.
Your European fuel taxes are of similar relevance to this discussion about fuel and transportation taxes/subsidies in the US.
6.14/gal a wonderful example of an amount of taxation I never want to see on a gallon of anything short of liquid cancer in the US. I'm convinced that we can reach a far more efficient way to implement carrots and sticks.
> I'm convinced that we can reach a far more efficient way to implement carrots and sticks.
What dollar value do you assign to the human and economic cost that any one pound of CO2 will produce over the next century? How did you come by this number?
If you haven't, then you're just going with your gut feel. Gut feel is a terrible way to judge whether or not policy is good, or not.
What if the economic cost of burning that gallon of gas is $10? Would applying that externality to the price at the pump still churn your stomach?
If you don't want to assign a greater or equal cost to it, then the most efficient solution for the market will be to keep polluting, causing net harm. Robbing Peter to fill Paul's gas tank.