Not if the increased cost is due to tax

Exactly, fuel should be more expensive because the negative externalities of its consumption should be priced in.

The extra value extracted from pricing in those externalities should be directed by the state towards offsetting the damage, it shouldn’t just be pocketed by the companies causing the damage.

> The only way to make non-fossil energy sources more appealing, is to make fossil sources more expensive.

Really? That seems pretty suboptimal to me. How about trying to make them cheaper/more reliable?

The problem is that we no longer have the time to let market forces work that slowly. Things like home heaters, stoves, vehicle engines, etc. have service lifespans measured in decades so we need everyone buying electric now. Things like EVs or heat pumps often have higher upfront cost so we need to stop having the situation where people feel like they have to pay more to do the right thing because the fossil fuel prices are subsidized so low that many people don’t feel much pressure to change.

Why would a much higher fuel tax, imposed on crude oil, and scaled in at 30% immediately and 10% over each the next 7 years, not work?

I'm wondering what effect that would have on food prices, which is a critical factor looking at stability of societies globally?

I am not an expert and have no answers, I just wanted to point out the situation is non-trivial form systems design point of view.

That's a valid concern and is the reason to scale the tax in over a many year period. That tax revenue doesn't have to be consumed by a swelling government, but part of it could be directly distributed as a dividend to each member of the society on an equal per-capita basis or biased towards lower income members of the society.

The counterfactual challenge is brutal, too: if we don’t do anything, the impact on food production will be far worse but if we don’t let it happen first we’re going to be plagued with people saying it wouldn’t have been so bad.

You can also subsidize clean energy, which is what we've been doing.

To clarify, we've been minimally subsidizing clean energy while not only significantly subsidizing oil exploration and development, but also using the largest military + intelligence budgets (US, UK) to "stabilize" oil producing regions and transportation.