One TikTok series host has made a video to dispel some of the misconceptions around the idea that addressing pollution and the changing climate would be "too expensive" or "bad for the economy."
"An expert consensus report shows that the vast majority of economists believe that climate change needs to be tackled ASAP," Unf******ThePlanet (@Unf******ThePlanet), a series affiliated with Pique Action hosted by viral TikToker Hazel Thayer, explained. In addition, those economists already believe that climate "will very soon or is currently having a negative impact on the economy."
@unf_ckingtheplanet Oh BuT THe eCoNMy 🫠
♬ original sound - Unf_ckingThePlanet
Thayer went on to explain that, in economics lingo, the planet-overheating air pollution being produced in massive quantities by for-profit corporations is what's known as an "externality," i.e., a cost caused by one party but financially incurred by another, and that it is "considered a market failure."
"That's why 75% of the economists in this report agree that we need to put a price, usually a tax, on carbon and that it needs to be a lot higher than it is," Thayer said, going on to explain that the government should then take that tax revenue and distribute it to regular people, meaning that the only people paying for pollution would be the polluters themselves.
The report Thayer is referencing is a 2015 study from the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law titled "Expert Consensus on the Economics of Climate Change."
Unfortunately, in the years since the report was released, corporations have, unsurprisingly, continued to be unwilling to either stop polluting or take responsibility for the pollution they have caused, while governments have continued to be fickle and mostly unwilling to take these corporations to task in any meaningful way.
There have been a few notable exceptions recently, though, such as New York state suing PepsiCo over plastic pollution and several states filing lawsuits against Big Oil companies.
The account's followers were largely down with the proposed increased carbon tax.
"Yay! Carbon tax!" wrote one.
"If you want to have an economy of any kind you probably would like a planet to have it on…" wrote another.
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