This is a point which gets overlooked pretty often.

It's the same as the value of taxi medallions in the Uber debate. Allowing Uber to operate in a city where technically only medallion owners were supposed to drive is actually really shitty to the owners of those medallions. You open it up, suddenly tell them that their investment is worthless because of a change in regulations. It's really unfair to them. Perhaps the way to quiet the medallion owners would be to pay them like 25% or 50% of what they were worth earlier in compromise bill allowing Uber in. They don't feel so slighted, everyone else gets Uber. That's win-win.

How it would work in this case: pass a compromise bill which involves paying these companies some amount of cash so their shareholders won't feel so slighted. They will give up their fight against carbon taxes, and we avert global catastrophe.

It's not "really shitty" to the owners of the medallions, the risk of a loss of the artificial monopoly should have been baked into the price from the start.

That the prices got as high as they did indicates the confidence the owners had over the stability of their political situation, which I have no sympathy for.

In that case, then the medallions also include the value of owners being able to maintain their monopoly through lobbying efforts.

Whether or not you have any sympathy for them, striking a deal is the best solution.

(Other question: do you have any sympathy for poor people who are hurt a bit by a carbon tax? Elsewhere in this discussion people are arguing against the tax because it hurts the poor. I think it would be a bit weird to be sympathetic to poor people who are hurt a little by a policy decision, but unsympathetic to slightly less poor people who are hurt a lot by a policy decision.)

I don't have sympathy for losses sustained via poor investment decisions. I have lost a small fortune in my life because of mistakes I've made, and I don't want or deserve sympathy for any of it. Losing is part of playing the game.

Poor people just trying to get by (and this included me at many points in my life) are who we should be saving our empathy for. Not wannabe businessmen.

Yes. I think we can say that the carbon owning companies are winning the fight so we need to do something different. Let's stop fighting them and let's start working with them.

Thinking about your post, I think you have a point there.

I noticed that in his speech, Elon Musk doesn't talk at all about what form the carbon tax should take.

In reality, if a carbon tax went into action, 90% of its effect would hit fossil fuel companies and nobody else.

Am I wrong? How do you implement a carbon tax then?

Suppose we want a tax of $50 / ton of co2 emitted. Then we do some chemistry and figure that burning 5 barrels of oil emits a ton of co2 into the air. Then the government adds a tax of $10 per barrel. Every producer who buys from the gasoline refiner has to pay the tax.

Individual gas stations and consumers wouldn't have to think about it, since they aren't purchasing from refineries directly. But the prices they pay would increase indirectly.

That seems pragmatic enough to me, and also quite effective. I live in France and, unless I'm wrong, the highest of the oil-related taxes here apply to the consumers, when you're getting gas at the gas station. Instead, your proposition - to apply a $10 tax on the barrel - would apply the same taxation on any fossil fuel usage, be it plastic fabrication, air transportation, electricity generation, etc... That makes a lot more sense environmentally-speaking.

No you are right. The basic problem is it is much easier to block something new than bring in something new. By trying to fight the owners of carbon you are giving them all the power, because they will find it much easier to block a carbon tax than you will find introducing it. More fundamentally there is no good reason why most of the cost should fall on the owners of carbon rather than the whole community.

The cost of buying out Exxon and co would not be too bad given we can't stop burning carbon today and any change will take 20 to 30 years. We can basically buy an option today on the carbon to be produced 20 years from now and this should be much cheaper.

Notably, all the European oil and gas companies have been calling for a carbon tax for a while now.

I assume part of this is because their gas would compete very well against coal. The reason for the US oil and gas corporations not joining them was the strength of the coal lobby in the US.

Wow, hadn't thought of that.

I wonder how much carbon you can lock up by buying long term oil leases and sitting on them, and what the price per ton would be.

In theory all of it. The complication is quite a bit of the "underground carbon" is owned by governments, but these can also be bought off. The key is stop fighting the owners of carbon and start working with them.

Can you give us some explanatations about your text? What's a FUD? and a nominal carbon tax?

FUD stands for "fear, uncertainty, and doubt," referring to studies that question global warming

Nominal in this context means a tax passed just symbolically as a feel-good measure, i.e. a tiny and ineffective tax