The problem I’ve seen is, people think fixing climate change shouldn’t cost anything.
I tell people all fossil fuel should have a $20/gallon tax to make people drive less and use alternatives. People then complain that’ll raise the cost of everything.
No kidding. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle aren’t in a random order. The #1 thing people need to do is reduce how much they consume. It’s going to hurt. Cleaning up messes always costs something. This is a MASSIVE mess it’s going to cost a lot!
Fossil fuels being sold this cheap are essentially a high interest loan that will be paid back one way or another, likely in the high price of failed food harvests, water shortages, and environmental disasters. The price should reflect the true cost, including the environmental damages it will inflict. If the price actually reflected the cost, we’d have been moving away from them for quite a while now, and that’s not even bringing up the fact that they get subsidies on top of that. And there’s more than enough money in the economy to make this possible too and help people that higher prices might affect in the short run, I know of a certain top 1% in the United States holding onto 31% of the wealth that did quite well during the pandemic that we could start with. And some massive fossil fuel companies with hundreds of billions of dollars that have been profiting on all of this for decades while using their money to try and hide the evidence and encourage inaction.
In this regard, Keen argues that carbon pricing is not enough, calling for carbon rationing. His proposal rests on a universal carbon credit and pricing everything in terms of carbon and money, where the rich would have to buy credits from the poor.
Love this idea from the article.
