Climate change action: part I

A short collection paragraphs around climate change action taken from a recurring post — a copypasta — on the popular social media platform “Reddit”. Minor edits are added to fix broken links.

Temperature data showing rapid warming in the past few decades, the latest data going up to 2020. According to NASA data, 2016 and 2020 are tied for the warmest year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. The 10 warmest years in the 141-year record have occurred since 2005, with the seven most recent years being the warmest. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

As the IPCC report made clear, pricing carbon is necessary if we want to meet our 1.5 ºC target. The consensus among scientists and economists on carbon pricing to mitigate climate change is similar to the consensus among climatologists that human activity is responsible for global warming. Putting the price upstream where the fossil fuels enter the market makes it simple, easily enforceable, and bureaucratically lean. Returning the revenue as an equitable dividend offsets the regressive effects of the tax (in fact, ~60% of the public would receive more in dividend than they paid in tax) and allows for a higher carbon price (which is what matters for climate mitigation) because the public isn’t willing to pay anywhere near what’s needed otherwise. Enacting a border tax would protect domestic businesses from foreign producers not saddled with similar pollution taxes, and also incentivize those countries to enact their own.