They're incredibly unpopular because even when they're made revenue-neutral (meaning, everyone gets a refund check) people don't realize most of them would make money if they actually reduced their carbon.
If memory serves Jet A is not taxed at all federally in the case of for-profit corporations (while non-commercial users DO pay a tax!) and many states also either do not tax it or tax it very litte.
It's completely insane that we do not tax fuel usage for probably the most energy-intensive way to move people and/or goods and often that movement of people is entirely frivelous.
Eh. It's not Bill Gates and Alice Walton. Sometimes the obvious answer is the real one: It's the fossil fuel industry.
> It's completely insane that we do not tax fuel usage for probably the most energy-intensive way to move people and/or goods and often that movement of people is entirely frivelous.
That one's just the arbitrage problem. Planes move around. If there is an international flight to a country that doesn't tax jet fuel (or taxes it less) then the plane is going to fly into LAX with enough fuel still in the tank to get back to the other jurisdiction and fill up again. Which actually increases fuel consumption because fuel is heavy and they otherwise wouldn't want to do that.
This is the same reason the EU doesn't tax jet fuel.
Any reason that can't be treated as a fuel import and taxed accordingly? I understand current laws may not allow it but is that legislation impossible to write?
Joe driving to work spends a larger fraction of his income on fuel and thus fuel tax than his rich counterpart.
This is true for all "let the consumer/poluter pay" taxes, they're all regressive. They say: it's fine to burn up the world as long as you're rich.
Personally I like the idea of setting the price for emitting 1 ton of CO2 equivalent emissions to the realistic cost of capturing 1 ton of CO2. At least, that seems like a reasonable end goal for a carbon tax, since that could fully account for the negative externality. This would of course be obscenely expensive, which would be a strong incentive to lower carbon emissions where possible, and for people to consume less of products that require large emissions to make or use.
The carbon tax would also have to apply to imported goods to be effective, and tracking how much tax should apply to imports would be even more difficult than doing so for domestic sources of pollution.
Please see my comment again. Under a revenue-neutral carbon tax everyone gets money back. But they don't realize it. Costs only go up for people who emit more carbon than average.
Exhibit A: Canada's recent repudiation of their carbon tax because nobody knew they were getting rebates. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carbon-tax-rebate-rebrand-1...
> Talk to some outside of your activist bubble
That's quite condescending btw. Is it "activism" to try to avert a calamity that will increase the cost of living by a lot more 20 years from now? I think it's good fiscal sense. Long-term thinking and planning. Y'know adult shit.
> Humans are, on average, selfish beings
And easily swayed by stupid arguments. Exhibit B: Canada's recent repudiation of the carbon tax because fossil fuel industry propaganda convinced everyone that the tax was the cause of price increases. Now prices will stay the same (because the market will bear them) but no one will get any rebate money.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_St...
Those were all voted in. It's a type of tax that people are happy with for whatever reason.
Even flying would only cost about 10% more for example. And most other activities have carbon free alternatives they can shift to rather than just eat the cost. Which is kind of the point.