They're incredibly unpopular because even when they're made revenue-neutral (meaning, everyone gets a refund check) people don't realize most of them would make money if they actually reduced their carbon.

They're incredibly unpopular because the ultraweathly use massive amounts of fossil fuels and thus lobby very, very hard against them...and make sure the public is often told just how evil they are and how expensive they'd hurt Johnny Everyday Worker, even car ownership, especially in a city (where much of the US populative lives) is not affordable to a large segment of the population.

If memory serves Jet A is not taxed at all federally in the case of for-profit corporations (while non-commercial users DO pay a tax!) and many states also either do not tax it or tax it very litte.

It's completely insane that we do not tax fuel usage for probably the most energy-intensive way to move people and/or goods and often that movement of people is entirely frivelous.

> They're incredibly unpopular because the ultraweathly use massive amounts of fossil fuels and thus lobby very, very hard against them...and make sure the public is often told just how evil they are and how expensive they'd hurt Johnny Everyday Worker, even car ownership, especially in a city (where much of the US populative lives) is not affordable to a large segment of the population.

Eh. It's not Bill Gates and Alice Walton. Sometimes the obvious answer is the real one: It's the fossil fuel industry.

> It's completely insane that we do not tax fuel usage for probably the most energy-intensive way to move people and/or goods and often that movement of people is entirely frivelous.

That one's just the arbitrage problem. Planes move around. If there is an international flight to a country that doesn't tax jet fuel (or taxes it less) then the plane is going to fly into LAX with enough fuel still in the tank to get back to the other jurisdiction and fill up again. Which actually increases fuel consumption because fuel is heavy and they otherwise wouldn't want to do that.

This is the same reason the EU doesn't tax jet fuel.

> the plane is going to fly into LAX with enough fuel still in the tank to get back

Any reason that can't be treated as a fuel import and taxed accordingly? I understand current laws may not allow it but is that legislation impossible to write?

Usage tax is impopulaire because usage taxes are regressive.

Joe driving to work spends a larger fraction of his income on fuel and thus fuel tax than his rich counterpart.

This is true for all "let the consumer/poluter pay" taxes, they're all regressive. They say: it's fine to burn up the world as long as you're rich.

Assuming the tax is high enough (or grows over time to become high enough) to offset the negative externalities, and that the money raised is used to offset negative externalities, they're better phrase not as "it's fine to burn up the world as long as you're rich", but rather as "it's fine to emit CO2 as long as you sufficiently offset the damage". Accounting for the damage could involve investments into green technologies, or paying ordinary people to make the tax popular, among other things.

Personally I like the idea of setting the price for emitting 1 ton of CO2 equivalent emissions to the realistic cost of capturing 1 ton of CO2. At least, that seems like a reasonable end goal for a carbon tax, since that could fully account for the negative externality. This would of course be obscenely expensive, which would be a strong incentive to lower carbon emissions where possible, and for people to consume less of products that require large emissions to make or use.

The carbon tax would also have to apply to imported goods to be effective, and tracking how much tax should apply to imports would be even more difficult than doing so for domestic sources of pollution.

I don’t think they are regressive, if you make it revenue neutral, because carbon footprint is heavily correlated with spending. Everything you buy has a good amount of embodied carbon. Revenue neutral is actually redistributive.

Regular people spend a lot more on fuel, as a fraction of their wages, than rich people. This applies especially in poor countries (also to food).

A revenue-neutral carbon tax redistributes the money collected from the tax equally. Poor people get back much more, as a fraction of their wages, than rich people.

Believe me, the common man doesn't need the ultrawealthy to dislike arbitrary cost increases. Carbon taxes are incredibly unpopular. As is common sense and/or planning for a future 20 years ahead. Humans are, on average, selfish beings. All this climate change activism is NOT the norm, and does NOT resonate with most common people. Talk to some outside of your activist bubble, and you will learn a thing or two about humans.

> dislike arbitrary cost increases

Please see my comment again. Under a revenue-neutral carbon tax everyone gets money back. But they don't realize it. Costs only go up for people who emit more carbon than average.

Exhibit A: Canada's recent repudiation of their carbon tax because nobody knew they were getting rebates. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carbon-tax-rebate-rebrand-1...

> Talk to some outside of your activist bubble

That's quite condescending btw. Is it "activism" to try to avert a calamity that will increase the cost of living by a lot more 20 years from now? I think it's good fiscal sense. Long-term thinking and planning. Y'know adult shit.

> Humans are, on average, selfish beings

And easily swayed by stupid arguments. Exhibit B: Canada's recent repudiation of the carbon tax because fossil fuel industry propaganda convinced everyone that the tax was the cause of price increases. Now prices will stay the same (because the market will bear them) but no one will get any rebate money.

Sales taxes are hugely popular and nobody gets a check in the mail from that

I don't know if you can call any tax "hugely popular". They're at best "grudgingly tolerated".

Sure they're not popular like Beyonce is but look at the map

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_St...

Those were all voted in. It's a type of tax that people are happy with for whatever reason.

And will probably not affect Taylor Swift in the slightest.

The irony is that carbon taxes don't really affect anyone that much.

Even flying would only cost about 10% more for example. And most other activities have carbon free alternatives they can shift to rather than just eat the cost. Which is kind of the point.

If Taylor Swift's private jet generates a few dollars more in rebates for everyone else, fine.

I don’t think “convenient” is fair.

Are solar panels convenient? All polysilicon today is made with fossil fuels, and the R&D to make it with renewable energy is still in-progress. Not to mention that we ship them across the ocean with fossil fuel.

The main process for polysilicon manufacturing (Siemens process) uses electricity. That doesn't need fossil fuels.

The step before to reduce the silicon dioxide requires carbon, which is where the fossil fuels come in.

Same thing with steel – both are critical input materials and can be made without fossil fuels, but they aren’t today. Maybe a carbon tax would fix that!

They're not actually unpopular.

They've been implemented all over the world, because they're effective. They cover 31% of emissions in developed nations.

To whatever degree you could say they are unpopular, they're unpopular in regions where the government doing stuff about climate change (or just "the government doing stuff") is unpopular, which makes it odd to single out putting a price on carbon specifically

See where they are used here: https://carbonpricingdashboard.worldbank.org/

You mean, they expose the true cost of those things and make the user pay them. They’re already expensive, the cost is just diffused. That’s the whole problem.

No, they are unpopular because they are a regressive tax effect the poor, which are now the majority of the U.S. population.