[dmurray]

> Seriously, what are the current best arguments against levying such a disincentive?

The best argument against it is: it's very hard to enforce it on everybody internationally, and if one country adopts it unilaterally, then production just moves to another country (making everyone worse off - same amount of pollution, but the production is presumably less economically efficient).

The second best argument against it is "the tax shouldn't be $x/ton, it should be $0.5x, which is a more accurate reflection of the external costs".

A distant third, but very effective in practice, is "the carbon tax is good, but it shouldn't apply to Special Interest Area X, because of these social/political/historical reasons..."

These aren't completely unsolvable problems, and people do try. But if your question was genuine, I hope you now see that there are some reasonable arguments not to just do this tomorrow.

[iso1631]

> The best argument against it is: it's very hard to enforce it on everybody internationally, and if one country adopts it unilaterally, then production just moves to another country

So tax imports (including the carbon cost of shipping)

It would likely require agreement between the US and EU to shift enough of the global consumer market to actually care, but with Poland and Texas that doesn't seem likely.

[bransonf]

Absolutely agree, thanks for this reply. I was cognizant of the foreign policy implications (how would this possibly get implemented globally) but I hadn’t heard or considered your points 2 and 3.

Given how much lobbying I suspect there is, 3 probably isn’t all that distant of a concern. Especially in older industries, say railroads or trucking, I understand there could be a lot of contention.

And as others mention, I think there needs to be a separation of taxation by segments of polluting activities. Would burning fuel in a combustion engine count as taxable energy production? Only power plants? What about agriculture, construction, material production?