That is not competitive, that is using government moopoly on violence to artificially raise the price of alternative product...
Competition would be done with out government force
And the best way we currently have to price in those externalities is artificially rising the price of the offending product, to give alternatives a better chance to compete.
A less dramatic summary is the government is partially factoring in the negative externalities of carbon, through taxation or minimum pricing.
You call that violence, whilst downplaying the very real harm (actual death and destruction) caused by excess carbon in the atmosphere.
1. The level of taxation is not connected at all to the cost of the externality. You know the externality exist so then you level that as the justification.
2. The taxation being collected is not being used to curb the harm of the externality, instead it is being used as a punishment for those that need or choose to use something the government has determined to be "bad"
If you want to ride in on an ethical horse of attempting to recover externality costs then the regulation needs to be done in such away that it both ties the amount of taxation to the actual cost of the externality, and any money collected from that taxation is used solely for the mitigation of harm caused by that externality
Some basic economics 101 reading can set you straight here.
It's a legitimate function of government to craft regulation when there are negative externalities distorting markets.
Sometimes government regulation makes markets more free. Crazy, I know, but please let it sink in.
If it helps: you can think of producers that rely on negative externalities as freeloading evil socialists who redistribute other people's wealth (without consent) to themselves.
here they are saying "Well we need the price set to X to be competitive" that has nothing to do with calculating the cost of the externality, which may be lower (or higher) the taxation needed to bring this product to be price comparable