The problem is that the polluters like oil companies were allowed to externalize costs.

Cheap gasoline, cheap products, cheap electricity, cheap food - those are all things that drive climate change. If they forced companies to actually pay the costs associated with producing their goods and services, the associated taxes could be used to offset the costs of climate change. The government could subsidize insurance costs by making those responsible for the rising dangers pay for what their actions actually have done.

Let’s say I’m a chemical company and I make an industrial cleaner that I sell for $5 per bottle. If I treat my waste product so that it’s safe, it will double my manufacturing costs, meaning I will have to charge more and lose market share and money. If I can just dump it into the river, I pollute the environment, kill wildlife, and drive up cancer rates. In the days before pollution regulations (and in many states where republicans have rolled them back under “deregulation”), that’s exactly what happened. There’s a cost associated with what I’m doing that I simply expect someone else to pay.

An added bonus of forcing internalization of costs would be a drop in consumption, with a corresponding reduction in pollution.

We’re not going to do it, though, because no one is going to vote to raise gas prices to $10/gallon.