The goal is to align incentives such that companies can produce goods without destroying the planet. The goods themselves are not the issue.
The problem is that at the end of the carbon tax equation, what does the money go towards? Can we significantly offset carbon emissions with the tax income? Is it already too late? Without some significant rebalancing humanity's greed and feelings towards nature, I'm not even sure any of this would ever work.
The per capita carbon emission of the US is about 14 tons or so. Of those, 4 are things the government or other entities are doing on your behalf that you don't have any control over but 10 are going towards your own consumption of things like patios and plane flights and beef. You can't realistically get that down to 0 but you can certainly cut back a whole want if you want to. Or you can pass laws that prevent corporations from producing carbon and offering you the things you want to consume, given the collective action that way makes a lot of sense.
Now, for some things like methane leaks there are obvious ways to reduce the carbon cost of our consumption out of proportion to the reduction in our consumption. But for others, like plane flights, we don't have any means yet of doing that.
In the end if we want large reductions in our carbon footprints without large technological innovations it's going to have to mostly result in us consuming less.
You can buy from a different company, or a subsitute good, or not buy it. We aren't powerless at all. Companies live and die by consumer purchasing decisions.
> The goal is to align incentives such that companies can produce goods without destroying the planet. The goods themselves are not the issue.
It depends on the goods. Some can't be produced without destroying the planet.
I don't understand: Everyone is always lying? You have no power to identify the truth and act on it?
Nobody said "all", we don't have to live in a world of perfection and extremes. We can buy electric cars, use renewable energy.
> even if we were informed for a particular product there may be no better behaved alternatives in the marketplace for something we consider to be a necessity.
Things might not turn out well if you try something, so don't try? How do someone get out of bed in the morning on that basis?
Your point is that you are absolutely powerless to do anything? It's obviously false, but why is that important to you?
Who said anything about the majority? And that's certainly not the demographic of HN, or the people creating most of the carbon footprint.
Also, by advanced economy standards, most of the world is deep in poverty.
> majority don’t have the luxury to go for the more expensive option because of their love of the environment.
It's not luxury and love, but necessity, responsibility, and survival. The impovrished people will suffer the most. Also, the options aren't necessarily more expensive, and are generally much cheaper if you account for the costs of climate change.
either you were led to believe it's only personal responsibility of direct consumers to account for the costs of climate change, or you were paid to propagandize that claim.
if first - you're wrong, if second - i'll leave it unsaid.