Great, nice to see the school yard bullies have a career path now.
You got a better alternative?
Because burning everything is, well, burning everything.
Some of these plans would split the revenue among all citizens, which is still a pain for non-citizens, but isn’t a regressive tax.
Some would fund public transportation, and if that’s accessible enough, that’s a boon for people who can drive as well as those who can’t.
Some would fund electric car makers.
And remember these people are complaining that they won’t be able to keep doing something a lot of people have never been able to do.
If you’re going to use a carbon tax as the mechanism of reducing carbon consumption, economic justice requires that it be made at least revenue neutral. This is what was proposed by Hansen years ago; the revenue from the carbon tax should be equally divided between all people on a per-capita basis. The working class (if done nationally) or global south (if done globally) would actually profit from this version.
The sorts of taxes proposed by Macron and Tanden are sharply regressive, and would lead to the situation where rich people continue to burn carbon fuels at will while poor people are priced out of the energy market altogether.
If you are going to make private transport unaffordable for the poor, you need to build up the public transit infrastructure first.
The core of the climate problem is not individual behaviour. Sin taxes won’t solve it. The core of the problem is the pollution created by a small number of immensely profitable corporations. And they don’t need to be encouraged or incentivised towards climate reform; they need to be commanded.
Individual union soldiers tried to cover their escape. Jeff Davis, Union corps commander, did not.
Whoever does AOC’s photography knows their stuff:
Climate, inequality, capitalism.