[acdha]

There are complex trade offs there: housing uses more power than a parking lot but it also provides far more significant social goods, housing can be built with very different levels of energy usage and external heat emissions, and while people need housing they don’t need cars the same way so you can offset a substantial fraction of the pollution from housing by reducing the number of cars used by residents.

The main lesson I draw is that everything would improve by taxing externalities: the land is vacant because the property owners doesn’t have enough incentive to do something useful with it and we have a lot of inefficiency in our housing and transportation which a carbon tax would go a long way towards reducing.

[fuzzfactor]

>the land is vacant because [of some imaginary occurrences]

Texas is bigger than that.

They have always taxed more carbon and more land in ways that make them rich as hell, at the average citizen's expense.

To the envy of other states' greedy taxing entities.

That wasn't so bad when there was still enough widespread prosperity for the average citizen to be able to afford it.

The land is vacant after they tore down the buildings because the taxes were already too high, and rising too fast.

No brag, just fact.

"How far up is the river now, Ma?"

"Six feet deep, and rising . . ."