Might be helpful to define it for people - a pigouvian tax is a tax on something to balance out the negative externality it inflicts on society. A carbon tax like you’re suggesting seems like our best hope of averting disaster. I’m not sure what would get it done, though, it would be very much against the short term interests of the rich, since they’d bear the brunt, as the largest emitters, and would massively disrupt the status quo in terms of what products are most cost effective. Making it revenue-neutral by dividending out all takings would help with its political popularity, and make it so it would positively impact the poor (since they use less carbon per capita than the average). But still seems hard to get it passed. It’s a bit wonkish, which is a big problem compared to something that feels better, like “ban all private planes!”.
ericd|2 years ago