But the rate can't be flat. Some types of carbon emissions are more important than others. That has to be taken into account, otherwise carbon tax will never be feasible morally or politically.
Eh… that’s an invitation for lobbyists and politicians to buggar the whole thing up for every self-serving interest imaginable. The simpler the better.
Why not? If it’s truly about the environment then everyone should pay based on their environmental impact. Sure, if carbon/methane/whatever can be shown to have a higher environmental impact when emitted at altitude or whatever, take that into account.
But placing the environment second to specifically target the “luxury” as some sort of way to “get” the rich is only harming your case.
No. It's about maximizing value per emission. The value of luxury goods is less than basic necessities (it's stuff we can live without by definition) so the rate should compensate for that.
I would accept a flat rate if each person got a fixed amount of emissions assigned to them and each person could decide to sell or keep their "emission right". Then everyone would have enough for basic needs.
Better to simply charge emissions based on the cost required to scrub them.
Trying to inject value judgements into it turns the whole situation into an absurd government mandated ethics board. The precise task governments have shown themselves to royally screw up time and time again.
This is why the game is really screwed up. To make these decisions when coming up with carbon credits, or any other decisions regarding resources in a market, policy makers have to defer to industry because they simply don't understand industry and will never have the time to fully understand it like a domain expert would. Now, its not necessarily that the industry's own scientists and experts are corrupt, but that the business models naturally disincentivize hard truths if they come at a cost to profit. Shareholders don't want to hear that their investment is being taxed above others in this case. They will hire lawyers to fight fight fight their battle until its won. There is no opposition here to that, no balance to that sort of reaction, so it continues unimpeded towards this way just as easily and unstoppable as a gunpowder reaction to flame. As such, as soon as you think about putting a restriction on industry, it will serve to benefit investors of that industry first and foremost as it will be penned by that same industry you seek to regulate.
The big issue I think with the tax is that its ultimately paid for by consumers and not capital, as a result behavior won't shift, people will just get poorer in need of more subsidy and wealth will be more concentrated. Rather than a carbon tax, we should tax wealth for carbon used to generate such wealth in the American economic system. We could do this by taxing the holdings directly, or having a progressive tax rate that is effectively zero for the sort of purchases a middle class individual will make in their life, and quite steep for the sort of purchases that are more common among the elite with substantially larger carbon footprints.
If it's going to be anything like the carbon offsets, I see zero reason to elaborate since it will inevitably end up looking like arguing with religious people.
I am all for taxing pollution but focusing on carbon alone makes me extremely dubious of the actual intent behind such proposals.
These things appear to be weapons disguised as legitimate efforts to improve things.
So instead of taking the opportunity to educate somebody on a topic you're implying you know a lot about, you've decided it's not worth the bother because I'm probably religious about -- checks notes -- carbon taxes... and there's going to be no reasoning with me?
So, instead of arguing your own thoughts on the matter, you choose to downvote when I share my own. Or, you could just do the usual citations spam to silence any dissenting opinions.
I don't have 500 rep. I'm unable to downvote. I tried to engage in discourse by asking you to elaborate on your position -- the onus wasn't on me to explain anything. Good luck in life.