> What if we figure out something good to do with that carbon, and capturing it becomes profitable? Should we return all that money to those it was stolen from?

> What if we figure out something good to do with that carbon, and capturing it becomes profitable? Should we return all that money to those it was stolen from? Well consider this. We have these things called taxes. Everyone pays them. Sometimes we change the tax rate. Once we change the tax rate we don't go back years and give people refunds for the new rates. Nor do we retroactively go back and charge people more if we raise their tax rates. Carbon taxes would, perhaps not surprisingly, work the same. At the moment we consider adding carbon to the environment to be a negative event and well tax is as such. If at some point in the future we decide we really want more carbon in the atmosphere then we can incentivize people to do that, but we generally don't go back and retroactively give people refunds for their old taxes:)