[joe_the_user]

A carbon tax is essentially going to hit the average person hard. Moreover, the average person has a lot of driving they have to do, tax or not. And plenty of rich people could ignore the tax and keep driving.

And the political impact would be angry people ready to listen climate deniers.

What's needed is a plan to eventually give everyone an electric car or some choice, any choice, that lets them do their daily business with much lower carbon consumption. Maybe taxes can change the behavior of industrial users but for consumers, this is totally daft solution.

[Maarten88]

> A carbon tax is essentially going to hit the average person hard.

I think that is just an excuse to not make changes that are necessary. Saying that something will hit the poor/average person/working family is an argument about wealth/cost distribution, which is separate from the actual problem.

When we, as humanity, have the natural resources, the technology and the labor required to do something that is objectively necessary, the only thing that can stand in the way is cost/wealth distribution: who gets to pay the bill.

So when objectively necessary changes do not happen, the only possible reason for that is that maintaining wealth/power are more important than suffering the consequences of not implementing the change.

[dcow]

Furthermore, it’s not one dimensional. Society would respond to a carbon tax. Maybe if your manager or director really really needs a team/department on site, the company would foot the bill to have you as a carbon consuming commuter. We would all adjust behavior in response to the tax. Things that obviously are bad for the environment are now obviously bad for your wallet and need to be justified. At least there aren't that many wealthy people so if they want to pay the tax and fly around in jets, so be it.

[joe_the_user]

I think that is just an excuse to not make changes that are necessary.

It's not excuse, it's a reason. It's not even the poor that will push back here on gas taxes but the somewhat well-off but not wealthy. These are the kind of people I don't have cultural sympathy with but if you just say tell them "oh, you're going to be paying a whole bunch for that pickup", you may find you don't get to say that after next election.

When we, as humanity, have the natural resources, the technology and the labor required to do something that is objectively necessary, the only thing that can stand in the way is cost/wealth distribution: who gets to pay the bill.

The US has a massively unequal distribution of wealth currently. A plan to get the poor to for this problem will fail 'cause they don't actually have money.

[thatcat]

so you're saying it will incentivize better choices like not choosing a pickup as a daily driver

[atleta]

> A carbon tax is essentially going to hit the average person hard.

Well, that's the very point. (And it was even why the carbon tax was mentioned in response to the GP comment.) Unless you make CO2 emissions (CO2 emitting behaviour) expensive for the members of the society (you can say, the average person) they (we) won't stop doing these.

Yes, a lot of people feel they have to drive a lot. But they probably don't. They can just afford it and thus they've organized their lives around being able to drive a lot.

Now if all these behaviours and activities would become very expensive then the market would come up with cheaper substitutes. Yes, people would have to change too but it wouldn't mean that everyone would just stop what they are doing and thus their lives would somehow grind to a halt. (E.g. can't drive to work any more doesn't have to mean can't work any more.) Carbon tax will also make carbon based energy production expensive which means that the alternatives will immediately seem cheaper and there will be a lot of incentive in deployment and development. Nuclear plants (fission plants, fusion ones don't seem anywhere near) will become attractive again and probably cheaper and more robust as well.

Nobody's claiming it's not hard. The claim is that it is the better solution. The other one is running into a very nasty future where food is expensive, water is tight and hundreds of millions of people will want to come to live to your country (unless you are one of thse who will have to migrate).

[megablast]

> Moreover, the average person has a lot of driving they have to do

Bullshit. Consider that the average person doesn’t own a car.

Even in developed countries people drive more than they have to.

[imtringued]

The average person is also getting hit hard by high energy prices for fossil fuels regardless of tax rate.

[joe_the_user]

Yes, average person gets hit by rising energy prices. Some portion of average people (especially small business owners) support demagogue who artificially lowers these at heavy costs. Rinse and repeat.