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And what really burns is that certain segments of our society are aggressively exploiting this externality.

I can't tell if you mean 'rich people' or 'poor people' by that, because depending on how you look at it, I could argue both. But doesn't that mean that everyone is at fault?

They presumably mean people who profit from the extraction and use of fossil fuels.

Yes, that’s approximately what I mean.

More to the point, the ones that are fighting tooth and claw to maintain the fossil fuel status quo, including blocking consideration of a carbon tax, which would be the market-based remedy to the externality in the GP comment. But also those fighting legitimate scientific inquiry into climate change, emission regulation, better fuel efficiency standards, etc.

But the point is that that's all of us.

OK, sure. But most of us aren't "aggressively exploiting this externality". We're just impressionable, and along for the ride.

I don’t think OP is segmenting explicitly by income (read: singling our rich people); better segmentation could be developing vs developed country per capita, which is what I assume is more like what OP is thinking of.

Has any politician ever campaigned on this though? I don't think I've ever had the opportunity to vote for a cap and trade

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