I don't think you understand what I was saying "fine" too.

But people need to pay for the damage they inflict on the world. Nobody is so "special" or snowflake that they get exempted. Farmers are adults, they can be treated like any other adult in our society.

It seems that we are redefining things such that the only way to cause "damage" to the world is via carbon emissions (humans are very good at focusing on one metric to the exclusion of all others). Is there any "damage" done in having greater numbers of the world's poor die of starvation since we've reduced agricultural output in our quest to reduce carbon emissions? Perhaps we can dabble in fertilizer reduction after we've exhausted carbon capture from coal fired electricity plants (particularly in China and the US who are the largest emitters and still use a lot of coal) or at least converted those to natural gas. Messing with agriculture, particularly right now with the current geopolitical situation is very stupid.

For that to work we'd need both a carbon tax (or something equivalent) and a heavy tariff on goods that are imported from countries without such a tax. As long as both of those things can be enacted at once, I'm in favor.

The point is that the farmer and miner become the saints doing penance on our behalf - we all benefit from the work they do, then insist that they handle all the costs of the negative externalities their work produces.

Sure, I suppose that could be priced into what they charge for their products. That may be a nontrivial challenge to work out, though, and it's possible they'll no longer be able to make a sustainable product after doing so.

Life is complicated and easy answers are often wrong.

> The point is that the farmer and miner become the saints doing penance on our behalf - we all benefit from the work they do

Seems more like this kind of take is an attempt to canonize them.

They're economic actors. Their work is very important, but that's why they, you know, take money in exchange for their output.

Excusing externalities is how we get corporate structures where officers and shareholders are richly rewarded and tax payers get to pay for (and often live in) the SuperFund site after the company leaves.

The cost will just be passed to you anyway.

> which means that their costs will be higher which they pass on.