Inelasticity means large price changes do not change demand much. Your statement about a car being necessary is an example of inelastic demand. You need to make the carbon tax so high that peole become so poor they cant deal with a car i order to change demand.
Electric cars are a red herring at this point because they still cost so much more than an equivalent gas car that the break even point is a decade plus out for the bulk of people who are relati ely low mileage. (Don't say a subsidy makes up for it, subsidies are mostly bullshit. Its just making rich people pay for you buying an electric car nit making sense).
The better policy is changing zoning so we can build more like the netherlands, which makes public transit/biking/walking a lot more viable vs a car, which makestbe elasticity of demand for carbon higher and makes a carbon tax cause much higher switching off carbon at a given price level.
You’re not commenting on the efficient car options. They’ve been around for years, and they’re not that expensive. I don’t know how people would behave, but people could certainly (slowly) produce less carbon by purchasing cars that are more efficient.
it looks like the rough progression is if you go medium car to small car you cut your co2 output in half, if you then go to electric you cut it in half again. Electric car is not as good as rail and if you walk/ride a bike you are pretty close to zero. If you're still driving your electric car everywhere you are still outputting ~ 25% of the co2 of just driving your medium sized car. The zoning changes I am talking about would instead make the option of walking/biking (basically zero output) or riding transit (lower than an electric car if done right) an option for a lot of current trips, while lessening the kms needed to travel. If you want to throw in a ride share electric car for the many fewer car trips you then need you can do that and your co2 output will be cut very drastically with pretty much no hardship to you vs the alternative of having the co2 tax high enough to make the wide spread between gas and electric cars make sense to purchase an electric car (and the commensurate increase in home heating costs that much larger carbon tax would cause, among other large energy uses that would be more expensive).
Electric cars are a red herring at this point because they still cost so much more than an equivalent gas car that the break even point is a decade plus out for the bulk of people who are relati ely low mileage. (Don't say a subsidy makes up for it, subsidies are mostly bullshit. Its just making rich people pay for you buying an electric car nit making sense).
The better policy is changing zoning so we can build more like the netherlands, which makes public transit/biking/walking a lot more viable vs a car, which makestbe elasticity of demand for carbon higher and makes a carbon tax cause much higher switching off carbon at a given price level.