The US should adopt a carbon tax

I'm disappointed that my opponent forfeited. It's considered common courtesy that you have a no-forfeit guarantee when you apply in the comments section of the debate. I'll crystallize my points and show you why you should vote Pro: There's immense urgency to the crisis of climate change now. Temperatures are rising at rates much faster than people think. Carbon dioxide concentrations are constantly rising, and if they're doubled, it'll mean a three-degree Celsius rise in temperature. At the current rate of carbon emissions, the human race will go extinct. I understand that there are studies doubting the impact of global warming, and many researchers think the climate sensitivity is at 1.1 degrees Celsius. But there are various studies that show much higher climate sensitivities. Many of these studies use climate models, which many skeptical researchers -- and even some members on this site who believe in anthropogenic global warming, such as 16k -- doubt, but the consensus is that climate models work. And there are many non-modeling studies as well, such as the one I cited by JD Annan, that uses a Bayesian statistical approach, which is the dominant method in the literature. All of these entail a major urgency to climate change. Of course, many people -- even those who actually acknowledge this -- just sit in front of their computers debating, and don't stop to ponder how huge the impact is. It's enormous. Stop for a second and close your eyes, and imagine if conditions were as I'm saying. Don't just think "ok, this is a debate, this is fun to read," or don't be just a judge for this debate, or a person who's interested. Think as a person who actually cares for the race, and for their own lives. Imagine heat waves everywhere killing many. Imagine floods, many more storms, and multiple phenomena causing them. Many satirists have jokes -- extremely realistic ones -- on how people just care about those that died in a flood just for those two weeks or so. I, like most other humans, was like that; I cared, but I soon forgot. Until I experienced the devastation caused by floods, and witnessed the sheer human fear and panic that's so inherent. Just post the Chennai floods, there was a rumor that a dam's wall had collapsed -- and at that moment, those that had lost so much just ran, and you could see the fear in their faces. The rumor was a false one. But that helped me appreciate how serious any loss is. Nearly dying changes nothing. Someone else dying changes nothing. But dying changes everything. Ponder for a moment about that, and imagine the sheer impact caused by climate change. That can be mitigated by a carbon tax. Imagine the reduction in fear. Think of that slight mitigation that could prevent the brutal, horrifying specter of change and death. Just creating a tax would stop that. It would mitigate heat waves and flooding. "Burning all fossil fuels . . . would make most of this planet uninhabitable to humans. " [2] That's why you should vote Pro. The magnitude of the impact is so immense, it's close to nuclear impacts in "North Korea vs Iran" policy debates. I'm sure most people didn't imagine a debate about taxation comes to that -- but it does. Nuclear power is another, smaller, impact. There's little question that nuclear power is immensely beneficial to society. It doesn't pollute much, there's a very low risk of emergency scenarios, and it benefits the economy. A carbon tax increases that. It's much simpler than the above impact.