> Steady increases in mileage and emission standards
> would be mandated, encouraged and rewarded. But the
> goal, the end point, would be explicitly stated and
> well understood: zero carbon output or as near as you
> can get us there with all deliberate speed.
That sounds like a Good Thing, though I don't see why it would be inconsistent with a carbon tax.
I guess part of my concern is that there may be reasonable uses for relatively high-carbon technology. There are reasonable civvy uses for Hummers. Maybe they can be restricted to emergency work, but sometimes there are commercial uses as well, and if acceptable carbon output is scarce then it should be priced as such to discourage, but not ban, such uses.
Similarly, the proposals for outright bans on incandescent bulbs seem wrong-headed to me. Fluorescents, at least the current ones, work poorly and are inefficient for short-use applications like closets, and cause spectral problems with graphic arts. A carbon tax would discourage use of incandescents for the very reason they should be discouraged, and push for more efficient solutions while allowing their use where they can be tolerated. That could also be coupled with directly funded efficiency research.
That such pricing would be hard on the not-so-rich sounds like a problem of economic equality, not carbon policy.
-- Andy