The need to reduce biodiversity loss, pollution, and waste means addressing the fundamentals of how we use resources and the changes in daily life that will be necessary to begin regenerating the natural world.
By levying taxes on consumers, governments would avoid jeopardizing the competitiveness of their domestic producers, which is the challenge raised by producer focused alternatives such as carbon emissions taxes.
Successful technical progress will also reduce the cost of products, which means that consumer taxes might be less visible to consumers because they would cream off only part of the benefits that would otherwise feed through to lower prices.
Doing so would hit the richer households harder because they consume not just more goods overall, but also the higher-end versions of stuff they buy.
Done well, progressive consumption taxes, by making smaller products relatively cheap, could help amplify a change in social norms to make small cool.
Surveys suggest that consumers are increasingly receptive to buying greener products, although they remain reluctant to pay up to do so.
Consider Japan, where the best-selling cars are micro “kei” cars, which are half the size and weight of the best-selling “cars” in the U.S., which are actually huge pick-up trucks like the Ford F Series.
Given the current expansive mode of fiscal policy, governments have a golden opportunity to get started on greening the tax system.
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