The difference here is that it's not deposit to encourage recycling, it's just a tax, and it's not a discrete thing you're getting taxed on, it's everything. It's costing everybody more and people are being paid twice. I'm thinking especially of the companies trying to sequester carbon in the wells they empty - they end up making money both ways.
>The difference here is that it's not deposit to encourage recycling, it's just a tax,
It's a tax to encourage the alternatives. If an electric car costs more than an ICE car, then taxing ICE cars through a carbon tax will make the electric car more attractive, at least on the margins.
> It's costing everybody more and people are being paid twice. I'm thinking especially of the companies trying to sequester carbon in the wells they empty - they end up making money both ways.
Similar logic to the above applies. Oil companies might be able to charge more for a barrel of oil, but it's not like that barrel of oil is suddenly more useful. That's bad for oil companies because it makes the economics of their product worse. They have to do more "stuff" to sell a given barrel of oil, but their competitors (solar panels or whatever) don't.
> I'm thinking especially of the companies trying to sequester carbon in the wells they empty - they end up making money both ways.
Sure, but the reason solar panels are popular is because they're (mostly) the cheapest way to generate power. By adding an additional tax to petroleum products based on say sequestering costs (as opposed to some made-up I won't chop down a forest offset) it encourages non-petroleum products to be used.
It's like paying a fee when buying a car battery or car tires unless you return an old one.
The fee needs to be overly pegged to inflation or something though otherwise you end up with the glass / aluminum cans problem.