this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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It would be a difference. If you tax carbon at the pump you couldn't build the solar panels without paying the carbon tax that was charged at the pump.
As for countries like China, that's what tariffs are for
That might work theoretically. The problem with that is that you cannot differentiate between that absolutely wasteful things (like private jets) and things we need in day to day life (like pharmaceuticals). You might even want to exempt the solar panels from the example above, because they will probably save more carbon than what was used to produce them. So that's really the "sledgehammer" kind of solution.
The point is to make things that use carbon cost more than things that use less. Some sectors like private aircraft will have people willing to pay whatever because they're already hugely expensive, but on the larger scales a carbon tax will clean up the vast majority of waste.
For a few of the worst examples like private jets it's possible to pass regulation against them, but I'd be very very hesitant to accept the government deciding what is or isn't wasteful across the board. It'll be hilariously harmful in the long term.
And the tax should apply to important things too. We need carbon removed across the whole economy, including medications.
Some industries, like the pharmaceuticals, may not be able to switch away from mineral oils so easily. That's why I prefer a balanced approach that makes unnecessary or even luxurious things way more expensive. The carbon tax approach would work in terms of "reducing carbon" but the people who are already struggling in day to day life would be hit the hardest. Those are the poor folks that have to commute to work with older cars because their bosses decided that there is no more home office.
The government making a list of what is wasteful and what not would probably fail, you're right about that. In the long term the carbon tax is a good solution. It's easy to implement but that doesn't mean that it's easy to make the transition for many people. And by "not easy" I don't mean "stop eating meat because of the carbon", which would be very easy compared to "buy 3 times more expensive gas to go to work or buy food for the week and loose your job".