[ksec]

The world could agree on Carbon Tax, and all the Tax will all be used for battling Climate Change. Funding Project like this one. ( Although. doubt this Project isn't without its downside, my guts reaction tells me there will be other problems in chemical reaction at this scale )

And it should be something like the EURO Cars emission standards, where the whole plan goes in multiple stages, giving time for businesses to adopt.

And all of a sudden all the business have an incentive to lower the Total Carbon emission, that includes everything they consume ( which would have Carbon Tax on it ). They could also buy Carbon Credit to offset any Carbon they produce. These Carbon Credit will obviously come from project like this or Renewable Energy.

Having the World to agree on Carton Tax is the hardest part.

[lonelappde]

And if the tax cripples business, it will slow emissions anyway

[goatlover]

Also innovation.

[adrianN]

There won't be much innovation going on in a +4° degree world. People will be busy fighting over food and water.

[goatlover]

But there might be important innovation before then, such as ways to counteract and adapt to a +4° degree world.

[adrianN]

Personally I'd rather not risk that "might" and instead hope for the "might" of sufficient investment to prevent that world.

[usrusr]

The opposite of innovation is business as usual. Taxation always leads to innovation, sometimes they are not exclusively in the field of accounting.

[marcusverus]

Do you have any support for your claim that taxation leads to innovation?

[usrusr]

The sibling fields of tax evasion and tax avoidance are both full of creativity.

If you want more technical examples, taxation systems that tried to get hard at personal transportation while mostly omitting business use led to both the SUV and to modern diesel. We may dislike both outcomes and making a bigger car more comfortable isn't exactly difficult, but the technology in modern diesel engines is absolutely amazing, even if adjusted for cheating. And clearly evidence to taxation influence, as it was exclusively developed in countries that went for fuel type instead of vehicle mass for being soft on commercial transport.

PS: and just think of the things some Finns are supposedly willing to do to extract a little bang from a given quantity of alcohol, taxation is the exclusive driver of that.

[inflatableDodo]

I don't know about 'leads to', I mean, innovation quite clearly precedes taxation, otherwise it would be rather difficult to invent it, but taxation definitely directly funds far more innovation than the private sector does, at least if we are talking about fundamental research.

[usrusr]

I was boldly going with a universal quantifier ("always") which might be a bit of an exaggeration, but I wasvery careful of getting the direction right. "All taxation leads to (some form of) innovation" is a very different statement from "all innovation comes from taxation".

[ThomPete]

If you by innovation means coming up with loop holes then yes. If you mean it leads to some fundamental innovation that improves the taxed subject then I am pretty sure you would be hard pressed to find anything backing that claim up.