[siculars]

>include a carbon and water tax on food.

Um ok. People who subscribe to this theory can calculate the proper offset and donate to their cause of choice or, you know, moderate their food consumption to adequately reflect their opinions on food production.

[vostok]

The point of taxes is that they force people to pay for things whether they want to or not. This is nice because most people wouldn't want to voluntarily pay for negative externalities.

I know that there's no way I would want to pay for the ecological effects caused by my lifestyle choices for example. A tax doesn't give me the option to not pay.

[cochne]

The point is that these taxes help offset costs that you pay for other people, not yourself. If there was a car factory spewing toxic waste into the local water supply, would you say to your neighbors just don't buy the car if you don't like it?

[deathgrips]

Clearly the solution is to make it more expensive because it's ok to buy from that factory if you're rich :)