At least a carbon tax can be used to mitigate the effects on the most vulnerable and poorest, and used to create solutions and alternatives to emissions. Extreme events, or food shortages wont give that luxury.
Now do you understand why no one wants to get punched in the face?
A carbon tax might at worst case take some jobs, but aside from in oil industries needn't take any. Yet will generate nearly as many jobs elsewhere as the proceeds are spent on projects to avoid climate impacts.
So no, I don't understand why someone would reject the far easier route.
This is not always true. If your measure of efficiency is "total goods output value per year divided by capital invested", there are plenty of Maxima which also produce lots of pollution.
Greater variation in weather events isn't good for agriculture in either direction. Flooding at one end (like the midwest US got hit with badly this year), or drought at the other. In between there's the increased occurrence of sudden events like hailstorms, wildfires.
Areas with good aquifers presently find themselves with a decent buffer against drought, but there's a worldwide phenomenon of aquifer consumers overdrawing and proving unable to properly regulate sustainable access to those, let alone factoring in the changing supply rate to said aquifers. E.g, if your aquifers are snow-fed, but the winter snowfall is gradually waning up in the mountains, then what used to be sustainable could "suddenly" run dry. The Yemen water crisis is a good example of this (aided by overconsumption for growing khat), but we've seen the same coordinated action problems even in wealthy democracies like California.
There's also other risks from heat stress (some crops affected by this more than others), and also secondary risks, e.g a lot of these same stresses (plus all the other stresses of modernity) on pollinators like bees.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/climate/rice-global-warmi...
That's a big assumption, given the impact/disruption climate change is projected to bring (and, arguable, that we're already seeing the early stages of).
I think most people realize this and just choose to ignore it. Make believe that recycling or buying a Tesla or writing a politician makes a lick of difference. But the reality is that simply existing in the modern world is the problem. We just like it too much to change.
Oh well. Hopefully things don’t go fully dystopian until 30-40 years from now and I’m dead.
Edit: Can someone who’s downvoting me prove me wrong? Do you honestly think everyone’s just going to be like, “Yep, this life I’ve become accustomed to, I’ll just give it up without a complaint.” I mean what planet are you living on lol.
Little changes are already being accepted by people. "You can't just throw all the trash into the trash. You need to wash and separate the recyclables".
While it might be misguided, it shows that people are happy to take a small hit to their lifestyle because the government tells them it's necessary for the environment.
We need to get net negative.