Climate Change: A Bonus Question

This is to follow up on Tuesday’s post, “Climate Change Is a Two-Part Question.”  In June, The Economist wrote about “Green New Democrats” and in particular about Joe Biden’s and Elizabeth Warren’s plans for climate change.  While neither of them has endorsed the “Green New Deal,” they both have big dollar/big concept environmental plans. 

After reading the article, however, my question is this: How can you seriously claim to have a plan for climate change and not address a carbon tax or some kind of a plan for carbon pricing?  I know that cap-and-trade couldn’t pass the Democratic Congress of 2009-10, that the Liberal/National Coalition (i.e., center right) in Australia won re-election twice after repealing Australia’s carbon tax (here and here), and that the "yellow vests" in France were protesting a gasoline tax increase that was part of a climate change program. 

Still, if you can’t convince people on a carbon tax, how are you going to convince people to spend trillions of dollars on other schemes that probably aren’t as effective in addressing CO₂ emissions?  If you do convince them (i.e., trick them) into supporting something that costs more and is less effective, what happens when they figure out the trick?

What climate change activists miss is that they need to come up with a way to convince people, other than their own middle/upper middle-class professional friends, that climate change is important and that we need to do something about it.  Some of the carbon tax proposals provide for the money raised by the tax to be returned to those paying it (sometimes with a slight tilt to poorer people).  The problem many Democrats seem to have with this idea is that, when they see all the money raised by a carbon tax, they think of all the things they want to spend it on.¹  And they can’t convince the voters they will actually give the money back.  Which means people, perhaps not illegitimately, see it as a tax increase instead of an effort to address climate change.

If climate change is important, those who think so must learn to do more than say it’s all settled – and call those who don’t agree “fools” (or worse).  It may not be easy, but then solving climate change isn’t easy, either (again see “Climate Change Is a Two-Part Question”).
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¹ During the Obama administration, Paul Ryan was pushing tax reform as head of the House Budget committee.  The Obama administration said it was in favor of tax reform, too, though to my recollection they never proposed any specific plans.  In any case, the Obama administration was never able to agree on a tax reform plan with Paul Ryan because, inter alia, Representative Ryan thought the tax reform plan should be revenue neutral, while the Obama administration wanted it to generate extra tax money to spend.  It is unfortunate the Obama administration couldn’t (or wouldn’t) agree on a tax-neutral plan with Representative Ryan.  It probably would have been better than the tax reform/tax cut package that wound up passing in 2017.