> since on average richer people will spend more on fuel
Why would you think so? People driving older cars, not being able to afford to fly - will certainly spend more money on fuel for their car.
Rich people use more energy. That’s been shown by loads of studies.
Maybe they drive a more efficient car, but they own much larger houses which are heated or cooled consistently, they travel a lot more, and they buy things with embodied carbon emissions.
Right, but now you're talking about adding the tax to the whole economy, not just car fuel?
That's close to impossible to implement. You'd need to track production and usage of everything in an extreme detail. Plus tracking all purchases (items + services) to a given person. So complete state surveillance of citizens. Globally.
> That's close to impossible to implement.
For a carbon tax, I think you only need to track imports, and domestic extraction of coal, petroleum, and natural gas.
„Only” track imports?
I think customs already tracks this. Smuggling oil and coal into the US at any meaningful scale seems very unlikely.
Tax all fuel. So those energy consumption of wealthy cost more?
Ok, let's assume you do. Let's tax all fuels 300% in the US. Now all manufacturing stops as your production costs are all over the roof. Everything is imported from countries that do not have these taxes.
What problem was solved here? None.
> Everything is imported from countries that do not have these taxes.
Finally a good use for tariffs!
Do you think flying evades the carbon tax?
Yes, if you apply the carbon tax only for the fuel at petrol stations. I am talking about realistic-to-implement solutions.
Aviation fuel is dispensed at a limited number of places; it would be easier (or just as easy) to implement a higher aviation fuel tax than a higher auto fuel tax.
It's trivial to implement auto fuel tax - it's already in place in most of developed countries.
There's an auto fuel tax in the US. Increasing that from $0.184/gallon for gasoline and $0.244/gallon for diesel to say $1.50/gallon and $2.00/gallon would ensure massive losses for that party in the next two or three election cycles.
Increasing the tax on aviation fuel to $2/gallon wouldn't produce massive shifts in the next several elections, therefore it's easier to implement.