At 60M tons (and steady) of a worldwide 10,000M tons (and sharply increasing) of carbon emissions per year, those buildings’ underwater status is unlikely to be affected by Oregon’s carbon bill.
You must walk before you can run. An Oregon carbon tax could serve as a model to others, and help inch us toward international consensus. It's a coordination problem; signalling serves an important role.
Indeed. I love the symmetry of state/national legislation skepticism (pointless, all large jurisdictions need to coordinate) and consumer behavior skepticism (pointless, need to vote for legislators who will pass laws impacting all consumers). It's a dynamic problem; most likely any one individual jurisdiction's or person's particular decision isn't going to change global outcomes, but it's hard to see how to get on a better global path without lots of decisions aiming for that at every level.
A carbon tax would indeed have been great, but unfortunately what was proposed was cap-and-trade and a bunch of "green jobs" pork. Better than nothing, possibly, but even so as likely to affect the international consensus as a zero-emission Oregon to affect the global temperature.