And that’s why carbon taxes are so beneficial. It’s a shame they’ve been villainized and are unpopular.

The issue is that they do not work. If your constituents made bad investments and are stuck with oil heating because they heard that solar is woke on Fox, you cannot actually have them face the consequences of their actions. You will either not be elected or the media response will be so bad that you won't be able to govern. You will have to bail them out or add exemptions

This is easily solved. Particularly as industry is such a large contributor to GHG emissions, imposing a carbon tax on industry and possibly even allowing grandfathering allows the costs to be baked in to (only) future considerations, and makes cleaner companies more competitive compared to dirtier ones.

Baking them into future decisions will not be enough. Sorry, if people made bad investments it will teach them to be smarter. Accomodations can only go so far to be effective.

I am a fan of a carbon tax, but one issue I’ve never seen addressed by proponents is the regressive structure of the tax. Oftentimes the poorest areas are using the most carbon-intensive energy sources and thus stand to be hurt the most by a carbon tax. There is little the average poor person can do to avoid this Similar logic applies for, e.g. EV subsidies - the people most capable of dishing out the cash to secure a subsidy are those in the financially best positions.

Within a given area rich people tend to use more carbon. Poor people are less likely to be taking international flights, etc.

Annoyingly, one big problem is that we've allowed NIMBY's to make it illegal to build homes near jobs, so people who can't afford homes near work are often stuck driving long distances to work through no fault of their own.

Rich people can afford electric cars while poor people won’t be able to, even if the car is used, through the next decade. If anything, SUV prices will drop like a rock…

Also, rich people can decide to pay for expensive upgrades to their homes (switching to heatpumps, upgrading electrical wiring for efficient solar/wind usage, solar panels, high voltage chargers for electrical vehicles), while poorer home owners (many of whom are on fixed income), aren’t able to do those things.

We agree, this is why I am not a huge fan of subsidies for EV's. Among other things, we should be encouraging fewer cars of all sorts. I do like ebike subsidies though, and better public transport.

Similarly, it can make sense to help people improve their home's efficiency, and in some places grants are available for this (insulation, etc.). Though in many cases you're using renters' taxes to make the homeowner wealthier, which isn't really fair.

In Canada we get a carbon tax rebate, fixed per-head. A family of four will get up to $1800 in 2024-25, and rural areas get more than everyone else. High income households consume more of everything than low income households overall, so they still pay more carbon tax in absolute terms. Meanwhile the tax rebate is not income based. It balances out some of the regressiveness of the carbon tax.

https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2024/02/can...

EV subsidies can help build demand for the vehicles. As adoption grows, charging becomes more widely available and manufacturing costs come down with volume.

The past decade does not matter as till this year consumption growth was more than renewables additions that has changed in 2023 and will accelerate from 2024. So the tipping point has just been reached add electrification of transport and heating and fossil fuel use will come down a lot faster than people owning fossil fuel reserves would like for the world to realize. In 2024 we will add almost more solar than all the solar installs in the world till 2020.

The problem is not how much solar we add, but that it is not corresponded with a reduction of demand of fossil fuels. Not sure about 2024, but at least for the years of the ourworldindata info it was still on its way up. And the solution is not just maintaining the same levels of the previous year, but dropping to zero far before there is no way out anymore.

Ah no it is we are not eating fossil fuel it is used to produce energy if an alternative cheaper source of energy comes up world will start replacing fossil fuels. You will see the effect of this in the next 3-4 years as solar and battery price out fossil fuels for electricity first and 10+ years when they start pricing out fossil fuels for other energy use. Where as global warming I am pessimistic about it I think we have already crossed the point of no return for me solar and cheap electricity would allow humans to survive easier in a warming world.

Any timelines we impose are artificial. Setting deadlines hasn't really helped accomplish as much as simply changing the economics has in recent years. The reason solar power is popular is simply that it saves people money on their electricity bills. That wasn't always true. But now that it is, we see huge growth at both grid level and domestic level of its deployment.

You are right we are still expanding the use of fossil fuels. But we do seem to be on a path where the peak usage is happening in the reasonably near future. The faster than expected adoption of renewables is bringing that moment forward.

I regularly read what Bloomberg NEF publishes on this topic. They published an interesting article recently: https://about.bnef.com/blog/designing-and-delivering-net-zer...

They are calling for short term policy changes to accelerate things. Most of those policies are simply about incentivizing people doing the right things.