[snootchiebootchies]

Originally Posted by CaptainYooh

I've had a brilliant macro-economics professor at Cornell. He used to say: <<Whenever you guys see someone proclaiming something "for the sake of our children!", it probably means that good logic and sound economic sense cannot be used to support the argument. Most of the time, it also means that politicians somewhere want to get some additional billions of tax dollars.>>

There are also many brilliant professors who have shown carbon taxes do work in incentivizing people to be more energy efficient.

Over time, issues that once seemed unresolvable tend to get resolved. New scientific discoveries come, new technologies get developed in time etc.

Just so you know, new scientific discoveries in the form of negative man-made feedback loops are inputs in many climate models and some of them still predict co-extinction events even with that consideration.

I also don't want to make any personal sacrifices knowing that the sacrifices are allocated unevenly and unfairly. Why should I pay carbon tax for myself (driving an efficient vehicle, installing an efficient furnace) and for someone who gets a full refund for driving a stinky old clunker and burning fire wood?

Sounds like you're an advocate for benchmarking as well. I mentioned I disliked how the carbon tax was rolled out. This is the main flaw. The carbon tax should be accompanied by benchmark emission intensities. For a car, perhaps it should be equivalent to a compact car gasoline engine, or maybe a half-full diesel city bus. If you own a prius or take the bus every day and emit under that benchmark, you get credits. If you drive a gas guzzler, you have to pay additional carbon tax for every tonne you emit over the benchmark. If you're middle class, that credit would be in the form of a cheque or tax credits, which amounts to cash in your pocket to buy groceries or invest in more fuel efficiency measures to get bigger refunds. If you're wealthy, that credit would be in the form of discounts towards the purchase of zero emission technologies, like solar panels. The problem with the Alberta carbon tax is the lack of real reward/incentive to be fuel efficient.

If humans are in fact the primary cause of climate change, then most of the damage comes from SE Asia (China, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia), where about half of the world population live and pollute everything around them like there's no tomorrow. What sacrifices are they willing to make and can they even make them without devastation?

If everyone is acting on climate change, it would no longer be a sacrifice. The concept of Pascal's Wager would argue the correct wager is to make that sacrifice even if nobody else is doing it. And you never know -- that sacrifice could be beneficial, such as a boom in the green technology sector and an increase in employment and wealth.