And if a country doesn't, are we willing/able to go to war? Given that some countries will burn down forests that pollute their airspace, and the airspace of their neighbours it's pretty likely there will be those that refuse the tax.
You smack import taxes on them that correspond to the carbon tax that should have been + 10%. Then they can either do the carbon tax or have their exports made much, much more expensive.
If you can smack a tax on their imports, why not already do it? This only works if you are a union/trading-block/superpower with the leverage to do so - and as the world gets globally competitive morally punishing taxes will require more and more "fighting the invisible hand" i.e working against the interests of free trade.
To re-iterate the point that probably got my original post downvoted: It helps to have a large military-industrial complex to enforce embargos.
That was basically already lost in the 1990s, right after the Tienanmen Square massacre, when the US continued to treat China as WTO good guy (Most Favoured Nation), instead of acting swiftly to connect the negative economic consequences of human rights abuses to. (But US big farm lobbied against it, and eventually no one with power really gave a shit. Just like nowadays with Hong Kong or Xinjiang.)
On the other hand the embargo against Cuba, Russia, North Korea, Iran are pretty devastating for their economy. (Which might help absolutely zero percent in terms of human rights, but if the goal is to reduce GHG emissions, probably a lot of countries are willing to make pragmatic deals about technology to benefit from free trade than countries that are willing to change their whole political system.)
Exactly. He said “collective action” won’t work, then called for “collective action” among governments. In these thought analysis, an self-serving person is a good proxy for how any government will behave.
