[atmavatar]

> what are climate change discussions, if not a discussion about externalities?

Climate change has been discussed for well over a half century, yet one of the main priorities of the current administration has been to hamstring renewable energy and promote coal and oil. I think it's pretty fair to say the issue is being ignored.

[dgellow]

Ignored by the administration, not by economists. The administration is a political body and proved over and over they don’t care at all about economists opinion (see everything from this admin about tariffs and trade policy)

[techsystems]

Carbon tax, plastic bag tax, etc. are from the learnings from economic externalities that is applied to climate policy. Other non climate externalities based policies are sugar tax, alcohol/cigarette/drug tax, education, healthcare, etc.