If you're a suburban citizen/voter who relies on a car to get to work/stores/school and on hydrocarbons for home-heating in the winter, the immediate impact of

If you're a suburban citizen/voter who relies on a car to get to work/stores/school and on hydrocarbons for home-heating in the winter, the immediate impact of a carbon tax (without mitigatory measures) is to increase your expenses. That generally leads to reduced living standards. I agree that properly pricing carbon emissions is essential, but one should not overlook the short-term impact. I remember the original Kyoto agreement, which seemed impossible at the time; in hindsight, the negotiators could have done us greater good by adopting a quantitative pathway that even the developing countries agreed was possible. Beginning to price carbon emissions, even a little, will have real impact. The most thermodynamically-efficient way to deal with carbon in the atmosphere is to keep it in the ground. Furthermore, when we burn hydrocarbons and sequester CO_2, we remove oxygen from our atmosphere.