Do you believe in climate change? Really?

This is an interesting article from Mother Jones, but I tend to disagree with some of the author's assertions.  I'll discuss my reservations at the end.

Dave Roberts says that centrists who say they prefer a “market-based” carbon tax to other, more regulatory climate change policies, are just trying to con everyone. The problem is not that a carbon tax wouldn’t work. The problem is that it would work only if it were huge—and if it were huge it would be no more politically palatable than all the other stuff the centrists are against.¹

I’m beating a dead horse here, but it’s really worth harping on this: Virtually nobody behaves as though climate change is real. That includes Dave and me and just about everyone reading this. We believe that climate change is an existential crisis for the planet, and the evidence supports that. But if it’s really that big a crisis, why don’t we act like it?

Let me put this in concrete terms. If you truly believe that climate change will broil the planet in the next 50 years or so, the very least you should do is immediately get rid of your car and adopt a vegan diet. How many of you have done that? How many of you have even considered it? Virtually none of you.² And like I said, that’s just a start. If you’re really serious, you should also toss out your air conditioning; only heat your house if temps are down in the 40s; never travel anywhere by plane; buy local food; and install rooftop solar. I’m going to let you keep your too-big house, but only because I’m a nice guy.

It seems as though I’m being facetious here, but I’m not. With current technology, this is what it would take from all of us to make a serious dent in climate change. And you’re not doing it. Neither am I. Nor, if we’re being honest, would we vote for anyone who we thought might force us to live like this. And that’s despite the fact that people like us are the most likely to support serious carbon reduction. As we all know, there are plenty of others who won’t even go so far as to support modestly higher CAFE standards or decommissioning of coal plants.

This should be a lesson to all of us: if we ourselves, who believe passionately that climate change is an existential threat, aren’t willing to make serious sacrifices to stop it, we should step back and ask why. Is it solely because it would be unfair for some of us to sacrifice like this when others aren’t? That’s certainly a handy excuse. Would we then be willing to support laws that forced everyone to live like this?

I very much doubt it. But why? After all, the hard part is already done: we believe in climate change. Think about this a bit and you’ll have a better understanding of why other people are unwilling to make even modest sacrifices to fight climate change.

¹Just to give you a sense of what we’re talking about, policymakers tend to talk about carbon taxes in the neighborhood of $30-50 per ton. That’s laughably inadequate. As Dave Roberts suggests, what we need are carbon taxes in the range of $300-500. A carbon tax of $100 equates to roughly $1 per gallon of gasoline, so this means a serious carbon tax would raise the price of gas by $3-5 per gallon. This is hardly inconceivable: Europeans already pay fuel taxes this high. And yet in America, you might just as well suggest that we murder puppies on live TV.

My comments:

• If a carbon tax starts low, rises steadily, and its proceeds are returned to residents via a quarterly dividend cheque, the opposition to it will be confined to fossil fuels interests.  I.e., no different to the situation with regulations.  And such a tax-and-dividend scheme, instead of falling disproportionately on the poor, would in fact benefit them, if the dividend to each resident was equal.  Rich people, because they have higher consumption, larger cars, bigger houses and more air travel, and therefore higher emissions, would pay more than they receive.  With the poor it would be reversed.
• Even low carbon taxes work, for example, in Australia and in British Columbia.  But carbon taxes which rise each year work even better.  So we could start out low with the aim of reaching $200/tonne by 2050.  Let's say $10/tonne in year 1, rising by $5 per year for 5 years, then $7.5/year thereafter.  That would produce a carbon price of $215/tonne by 2050.  I guarantee you that, provided there are no exemptions given to "deserving" sectors, this will slash emissions to near zero.
• Just looking the chart shows how many sectors are involved in producing CO₂.  Creating regulations to cover each sector would be difficult and politically fraught.  Why not just use the price system?  It's very efficient.  If a carbon tax raises costs, businesses and consumers will look for ways to reduce costs, and those ways will involve fewer carbon emissions.  For example, at just $50/tonne, iron and steel manufacturers will switch to using hydrogen from coal.  At $200/tonne, synthetic aviation fuel becomes cost competitive with kerosene. 
• A carbon tax isn't the only pricing mechanism we could use to reduce emissions.  For example, each year, coal-fired power stations could bid for a subsidy to close down, with the requirement being that new "firmed" replacement renewable generation capacity would have to be built.  This would ensure the cheapest phase-out of coal and gas.  We could also institute something like California's or China's ZEV EV quotas, whereby all car companies have to have a targeted EV percentage of sales, and if they don't, they have to buy credits from companies which have exceeded the targets.
• The article implies that if you are not doing your bit, you don't care.  But this is nonsense.  For example, if you live in a flat, you can't install rooftop solar.  If you can't even afford a new car, how will you be able to buy a new EV.  And yes, using public transport is A Good Thing, but in many places, public transport in non-existent or sketchy.  I care deeply about the climate, but I don't have solar, or an electric car, or behind-the-meter batteries, because I can't afford them.  (I am vegan, so I'm not a total loss!)  The problem with cutting personal emissions at some cost to yourself, is that others will go on polluting.  This is to do with the externality of carbon emissions.  Whoever burns fossil fuels gains a private advantage, but the cost in terms of CO₂ emissions is borne by everyone else.   A carbon tax is an excellent way to rectify this injustice.  It converts an external cost to an internal one, and when that happens, rational economic actors change their behavior.  It suits fossil fuel companies to emphasize the personal efforts to reduce emissions, because it draws attention away from their vast corporate emissions.