It might not be surprising, but it is an extremely important point to keep reiterating.

People keep spreading the malthusian myth of overpopulation and shifting blame to the poorest. Blaming the poor while giving the rich a free pass is not only unfair, it’s cruel.

Once climate change denialism is not tenable anymore, climate change will be instrumentalized for atrocities.

I'm afraid that you are onto something here. People misattributing climate change to the poor masses is increasingly common and overpopulation in poor countries is often cited as a reason not to engage in any change of behavior on the rich nations side.

Accounting of the externalities when applying taxes would certainly help.

Oh boy, that would be awesome.

I'd love to see the EU to start addressing this by setting higher environmental standards, putting them in force locally and apply such taxes to imported products.

Sadly this won't work. Unfortunately, the capitalist system is very opportunistic and "[my country] first!" initiatives would quickly out-compete countries and trade blocks that heavily tax consumption or production in that way.

Just look at Norway, my personal go-to example for that kind of taxation. The country has an absurdly high "luxury"-tax on cars (up to 100% all costs combined). The only reason they can do that, though, is the complete lack of a domestic automotive industry. The high taxation simply doesn't affect their national economy in the slightest. Countries like Sweden, the Czech Republic,or especially France and Germany couldn't do that - they have a substantial automotive industry.

What unfair competition can do could be observed in Europe in the 1970s and the 2000s. In the 1970s, pretty much the entire textile industry moved to South East Asia due to absurdly low costs compared to Europe (one could name it outright slavery). In the 2000s, the Chinese government did the same to Germany's solar industry by undercutting prices using substantial government subsidies.

Proper taxation of goods depending on environmental impact would be able to fundamentally change the economy from focus on consumerism to a more sustainable and cyclic economy. But it only takes a few market actors that don't participate to render the scheme unsustainable overall... And the recent trend towards autocratic "alpha males" in global politics (from the White House, to the Kremlin, to the Bosporus, and South America) paired with increasing nationalism worldwide doesn't make me hopeful for the near future.

These are some very good points. Thanks for putting them together.

I don't know about the question.

Here's another: how do populations become motivated to exert pressure for change? One way is to have an enemy. That's been seemingly lacking with the fight to protect our ecosystems thus far. But once we understand that the rich are the common enemy of all life on the planet, it opens new possibilities.