[politelemon]

I do agree, and take it a bit further: I feel that one of the greatest modern tricks that have been played on us is to shift attention away from the actual culprits and make us believe that it is us, at the lowest levels, who need to make the changes and fix the environment. Things like flight shaming and straws stand out as prominent examples and this could very well be due to the tangibility of the actions. When they avoid a flight and take public transport, or use a metal straw, they can feel like they are doing something. But the impact is miniscule compared to what they could be doing which is enacting a policy change at higher levels, changes which will have an impact for years to come.

This 'attention shift', it's similar to the way the plastic/oil industry successfully instilled recycling as a way to get us thinking we're doing something useful, while the larger goal was to keep plastic bans at bay [1]

This trick plays itself out in other spheres; recently in the UK we would have people "clapping for the NHS". They would stand outside their doors and clap or bang pots/pans together. Very few of us wrote to our MPs asking for better working conditions and better pay. Anyway, just last week, our government voted against protecting the NHS from a post-Brexit trade deal.

1: https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/822597631/plastic-wars-three-...

[WalterBright]

The most efficient solution is ridiculously simple - put a tax on the emission of pollution. Couple it with a corresponding tax reduction on productive behavior.

This is based on the blindingly obvious maxim that if you want more of something, subsidize it. If you want less, tax it.

And by taxing pollution instead of regulating it, you generate revenue for the government.

[PaulHoule]

In the us people riot if police kill an unarmed black.

People in the us accept that the price of fuel goes up and down but they are the only ones. In other countries people riot when the cost of fuel goes up.

Many people have a lot of fear that tradable emission permits are an Enron-style scam that will suck money out of our pockets into somebody's pocket who will recycle 1% of profits back to politicians to maintain their privilege.

What we need to is either ban certain uses of fossil fuels or introduce an energy source that is so superior that people don't want to use fossil fuels. The latter is hard but doesn't violate the laws of physics, but any other kind of Collective action on climate violates the laws of social physics which are absolute for N > 10^9.

[lcam84]

return the money from these tariffs to everyone through a unconditional income

[PaulHoule]

Definitely if you did a carbon tax it could be made revenue neutral by either paying it back to people and cut other taxes.

[lcam84]

The protests happen in part because the demonstrators do not trust the government to spend the money well. They are afraid that they will distribute it to the "usual few" or "subsidize the lazy ones". Distributing the tariffs equitably among the population would take that stigma away. This would encourage those tariffs that are so necessary for us to comply with the Paris agreement.

[imtringued]

People don't like paying taxes and they also don't like their taxes being wasted. If the tax is revenue neutral (refund total co2 tax revenue divided by number of tax payers) there is no problem in theory but people still hate taxes.

[Gibbon1]

I go a step further and say for consumer stuff, put a stiff excise tax on things that emit pollution at the point of sale. Don't apply a $60/ton carbon tax on gasoline. Put a $100/ton excise tax on new cars. Use the cash flow to buy back older cars.

When it comes to industrial stuff, that's what you just work with industry to generate mandates that everyone has to follow. Manufacturing managers I talk to say they don't mind mandates. They just don't want to the be the sucker. As in Gallant installs $5 worth of emissions controls. Gooffus ships the factory to Indonesia and bribes government officials to look the other way.