>I don't get that? If do adopt a carbon tax, then the rich guy who wants to drive a performance car pays a lot more, than the poor person who take the bus.
But the poor guy with a beat 20 year old car in a badly insulated rental pays more than the rich guy with his Tesla and energy neutral villa.
Please don't argue in favour of electric car subsidies (or any other subsidies).
That's just needless paperwork, and never catches all use cases. Eg the guy who walks doesn't get an electric car subsidy. Or the guy who practices hypermiling on his ICE, vs the guy who drives his ICE like a maniac. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermiling
Much easier to just apply an emission tax (or a cap-and-trade program) and let people figure it out by themselves without extra paperwork and government favouritism.
If you want to do redistribution to help the poor, the impact of the overall tax system is important. You don't need to make every single tax progressive.
Individual taxes, especially sin taxes, should be designed to do their job as efficiently as possible.
But the poor guy with a beat 20 year old car in a badly insulated rental pays more than the rich guy with his Tesla and energy neutral villa.