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I imagine adversaries of the West are having the biggest laugh at us voluntarily giving up key commodity production abilities in the name of combatting climate change.

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The historical problem of Russia is inability of exporting any produce other than raw materials, on account of having Europe as neighbour which can produce anything easier and often cheaper.

But now, with the carbon tax and gas prices in EU, I wonder if Russian mfg capacity will suddently become competitive.

The funniest thing would be Europe pricing itself out of Russian oil due to carbon tax, and then buying now-cheap goods from Russia made based on affordable oil.

Carbon tariffs would be a good way to even the playing field in that scenario.

There's been serious talks about carbon border adjustments, that is, levying an extra import tax on products from countries that don't have a sufficiently ambitious domestic climate change policy, so probably not.

This strikes me as pretty optimistic given that exactly this kind of carbon dodge has been going on for years (e.g. Europe and the US importing goods from East Asia and other countries running on dirtier fuels)

They may be relieved, being the people who suffer most from climate change. It's not much of a laugh.

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