I think the Earth gets cleaner at largely the same rate. The drive to compete on prices forces 99% of the cars sold to be optimized towards lowered emissions (

I think the Earth gets cleaner at largely the same rate. The drive to compete on prices forces 99% of the cars sold to be optimized towards lowered emissions (accounting for the increased price of those optimizations). I don't find your subsidy argument persuasive. There's never been (to my knowledge) a government subsidy for buying cars (outside of cash for clunkers, which was stimulus disguised as subsidy), and I don't see a carbon tax affecting that. As for college being expensive, like many things that's an American phenomenon. The rest of the western world seems to get by just fine with affordable education and healthcare. Even here in Canada, where education is far more expensive than in Europe, our tuition is pretty reasonable (~$2500/semester). I graduated with a BSc in CS and $38k in student loans, and I took my sweet time about it.