Right when you or I look at it we say that the biggest producers need to buy the most carbon credits. When coal and manufacturing look at it they say those industries need the most exemptions because they emit the most carbon.

Sadly, international agreement is the only hope because it is a global problem. For example, if California will go 0 emissions tomorrow, it will hardly matter if the rest of the world would remain on the current trajectory.

If Burundi goes 0 emissions tomorrow it hardly matters

If California does, it matters : - It shows it is possible, and increase political pressures on others - It create a pressure and market (California is big enough and Burundi or Alaska are not) for new solutions (technology based or not) that can be implemented elsewhere - It help decreasing the cost of many existing solutions, and everybody will benefits from it - It is possible to set up carbon tax at the border, increasing the incentive to follow California path

There will never be international agreement. No one will agree to put themselves at a disadvantage compared to everyone else. So greener technology will have to become the cheapest option or you'll have to commit mass murder to force other nations to submit against their will.

Do you think carbon taxes can work without international agreement? If so what approach gives you hope?

Carbon taxes are easy. You tax anyone who pulls it out of the ground or imports it. With international agreements you might drop the import tax and let to source country tax the extraction. The producers will just pass the added cost on to the users. Even this simple solution will be shot down by politics.

It’s a fat regressive tax at a time when the lower working class is already rebelling. Invest more in technology and instead increase subsidies and build transmission lines

You can make it non-regressive by paying a dividend that is funded by the carbon tax revenues. This is also a possible mechanism for making it revenue-neutral, which could be politically advantageous.

I believe the common name for this approach is "fee and dividend". I'm surprised I don't see it discussed very much. I would think that it should be palatable across the political spectrum.

Carbon generates negative externalities paid by everyone : current system heavily subsidies carbon (and many polluting stuff)...

IMF says "Globally, subsidies remained large at $4.7 trillion" https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Glo...

Seems a fat regressive subsidie...

Working examples of carbon taxes are revenue neutral by design but people don't understand that it would redistribute the money to low income people who can't afford e.g. expensive international flights. They would rather have no tax instead. So nothing will happen unless it happens through a backdoor.

I don't think the poor are emitting that much CO2, they aren't getting on a plane to Bali for their holidays or driving to the Hamptons every weekend.

The solution is to shift taxes and benefits rather than just adding new ones.

Not the OP, but the best approach to climate change to me seems to make it so it's more expensive to produce energy that damages the climate. The government's role in this would be to take steps to encourage these kinds of developments. This certainly seems within our grasp, if we had the willpower to disband the top-down approaches being advocated and ones that will never work because it's asking the developing world to ... stop developing. If they don't stop emitting we're all doomed.

In contrast, if one or more countries develop a cheaper, clean technology that can be exported globally (perhaps at a cost) all countries would be incentivized to switch to it to save costs, and emissions start to plummet.

We need a full court press on getting to next-generation energy sources that stand to be 10x cheaper than existing ones. I'm not sure if you can get there with solar and other renewables alone, but from first principles (ie physics) it sure seems tractable to get there with some combination of nuclear technology and those sources.

Governments passing bills like this so people want to increase pivogian taxes:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend#Unit...

Governments love taxing stuff, and carbon taxes give them an excuse to raise taxes for something that seems like a “good reason”.

But of course they wouldn’t put one in without excluding everyone powerful enough to make a fuss about it.

There are heavy subsidies to fossil fuel (4.7 trillons a year globally says the IMF)... Mostly negative externalities. Carbon tax can be seen as a tax... or as the end of a subsidy, allowing to get the most efficient solutions for the people

In short: capitalism

I disagree, I think it's just simple greed. Capitalists are more-or-less rational and not unintelligent. Greed explains why e.g. VW would cheat on emissions tests, etc.

Capitalism inevitably leads to consolidation of power and greed.