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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

Carbon taxes are ludicrously unpopular with voters. Washington state, one of the most liberal in America, rejected one in a nearly 2-1 vote. When it was tried in France there were riots in the streets. Any commentary about “ruthlessly taxing externalities” which doesn’t take this into account is just fantasy.

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When was the nearly 2-1 vote in Washington? I found 59% against in 2016 and 57% against in 2018.[1][2]

The French government tried to spin a fuel tax as a carbon tax apparently. And protesters said it wasn't just about that tax.[3]

[1] https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Carbon_Emission_Tax_and_S...

[2] https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1631,_Carbon_E...

[3] https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-riots-france-paris-in...

In Canada we have a federal election in a week. All four main stream parties have a carbon tax of one sort or another on their platform. So it's not ridiculously unpopular here.

Most of Norway's political parties have in their plans to phase in a CO2 tax of $230 per metric ton by 2030. That's not quite up to the level of the current market price of the CO2 sequestering methods that seem to plausibly work for geological timescales, but it's within the range they would likely end up in if developed.

Side note: If we acknowledge that a realistic CO2 tax is democratically unpopular - excellent! Now we're making progress, that's a real piece of data to work with. It needs to happen, there's absolutely no way around it. If it doesn't currently fly in a democracy, we need to sweeten the deal. Trying to force it through by revolutionary means is an act of desperation, let's hope we don't even have to consider it. There's a hundred ways to make it more palatable. Let's start in that end!

Paying part of the CO2 tax back to individuals is one way of bribing the electorate to do what's necessary.

The Canadian plans range from $20 to $250. And the $20 party has neutered it further. But the remarkable thing is that the right wing party actually has a carbon tax in their platform at all. 2 years ago they were dead set against one.

A carbon tax could easily be coupled with a dividend...

That's how Canada currently does it.

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