LET’S BE HONEST, nobody likes paying taxes, yet like them or not, they are the price we pay to live in a civilised society. Some products, like cigarettes, attract high taxes. Three-quarters of the cost of a packet of fags in Ireland is tax.

The main purpose of high cigarette taxes isn’t to raise revenue, but rather, to dampen demand, and it has been hugely successful. In the last two decades, some 800,000 people have quit the habit, with Ireland’s smoking rate dropping from 27% to 18%.

Carbon emissions are orders of magnitude more dangerous than tobacco, threatening civilisation as a whole and presenting an existential risk to billions of people worldwide.  If that sounds hyperbolic, here’s how UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres framed it:  “Our addiction to fossil fuels is pushing humanity to the brink. We face a stark choice: either we stop it, or it stops us”.

This, in a nutshell, is why putting a price on the damage inflicted by carbon is not just a very good idea; it’s essential if we are to have even a shot at decarbonising in time to avert a civilisation-ending global calamity.

Some 35 years ago, Sweden led the world in introducing a carbon tax, initially levied at €23 a tonne, rising steadily over time to €138 per tonne today. As the Swedish government explains: “By increasing the tax gradually and in a stepwise manner, households and businesses have been given time to adapt, which has improved the political feasibility of tax increases”.

Had it worked? In short, yes. Over the last half-century, Sweden’s per capita emissions have halved, to around 4.5 tonnes, despite national income more than doubling in the same period. And bear in mind that Sweden is a lot colder than Ireland, where our per capita emissions today are around 10 tonnes.

Ireland first introduced a carbon tax in 2010, initially at €15 per tonne. It increased to €20 in 2012, and remained at that level until 2020, when the Finance Act set out in law a trajectory of annual increases. By raising it at a steady €7.50 each year, the aim is to have a €100 per tonne carbon tax by 2030.

Last October, the carbon tax reached €71 a tonne for motor fuels, with other fuels due to........

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