Fund a UBI.
I'm fascinated at downvotes for this suggestion. What's actually wrong with spending part on lower impact infrastructure and part on a replacement for a broken welfare system?
Instead, push for a fee-and-dividend model – not entirely UBI, but similar in spirit. It's what most economists support, and it has enough bipartisan support [0] that there is actually a bill before Congress now that has a chance of passing.
[0] https://citizensclimatelobby.org/climate-solutions-caucus/
Being perfectly revenue neutral is NOT the aim. Dramatic and lasting behaviour change is, and enough redistribution that the solution doesn't create other huge problems.
If fee and dividend is what the US is most amenable to, so be it. The biggest advantage (for the US) of fee and dividend is that it seems the most US market friendly of the alternatives that have been widely discussed.
I have only ever heard it proposed in a US context. It's also the mechanism I know least about. Which is no reason at all not to try. Still, I'd be delighted to see the US, or anyone, successfully adopt it. It may even turn out to be the best of the proposed mechanisms.
The tax would price goods and services relative to their CO2. Hopefully some things like single use plastic, ICE cars, coal power would become impossible or very near so.
If you used some of the proceeds to start a UBI, it might pay to replace an ageing and creaking welfare and pension system. UBI might be suitable for a world with less job security for most, with many jobs potentially automated away and populations that are ageing rapidly.
It's the kind of thing governments do with their yearly budget to provide for citizens.
Spend it all on solar and wind power if you prefer, or the NHS; reopen some libraries. That the tax prices the impact correctly is the more important. Just so long as the govt doesn't decide to subsidise petrol with the proceeds. :p
Norway's oil fund pays pensions. Use this to fund something equivalently useful.
If the assertion that a carbon (or whatever else) tax is to cover the "cost" of externalities, then the money needs to go to actually addressing those externalities. Otherwise, it's just a lie to make a general tax more palatable.
It also runs into the problem that "sin taxes" have, namely that once a government entity has a consistent stream of income from such taxes that it can spend on its general expenditures, said entity has a perverse incentive to not curtail the activity below a certain point to avoid endangering that income stream.
> Norway's oil fund pays pensions.
Norway's oil fund is built up on royalties from exploration and extraction activity in Norwegian territory. It's not a tax on externalities.
