To be fair, if people living in cities tend to have much lower GHG emissions than people living in rural areas, we probably want to have an extra incentive for people to live in cities, right? And even with that, there is a pretty wide variation of emissions levels between consumers in each of these types of regions.
You can have a very small town of 100 people that is designed so people can get around without a car. Small towns in Ireland, for example, look very different from small towns in the US -- but we used to build like that, and we can again. If you live out in the sticks, you probably make a lot of unnecessary trips because fuel is cheap, where there is potential to wait and do lots of shopping at once. You can probably insulate your house better, buy an electric water heater, stick solar panels on your house, etc.
Farms depend on a lot of machinery that uses fossil fuels right now, which is difficult to change, but could gradually be converted to more efficient energy sources. And actually, the Energy Innovation Act, which is Citizens' Climate Lobby's preferred carbon tax, has an exemption for agriculture -- it's a very small part of emissions, and it's worth it to get more people on board with the bill and get it passed sooner rather than later.
And we shouldn't compare an imperfect but still good tax to some unachievable ideal, we should compare it to other real-world solutions, and in that comparison, I think a carbon tax with dividend is probably the fairest and most cost-effective way to quickly cut carbon emissions.
You can have a very small town of 100 people that is designed so people can get around without a car. Small towns in Ireland, for example, look very different from small towns in the US -- but we used to build like that, and we can again. If you live out in the sticks, you probably make a lot of unnecessary trips because fuel is cheap, where there is potential to wait and do lots of shopping at once. You can probably insulate your house better, buy an electric water heater, stick solar panels on your house, etc.
Farms depend on a lot of machinery that uses fossil fuels right now, which is difficult to change, but could gradually be converted to more efficient energy sources. And actually, the Energy Innovation Act, which is Citizens' Climate Lobby's preferred carbon tax, has an exemption for agriculture -- it's a very small part of emissions, and it's worth it to get more people on board with the bill and get it passed sooner rather than later.
And we shouldn't compare an imperfect but still good tax to some unachievable ideal, we should compare it to other real-world solutions, and in that comparison, I think a carbon tax with dividend is probably the fairest and most cost-effective way to quickly cut carbon emissions.