We may finally have the tool we need for carbon tax plus carbon tariff on climate change

I have long touted that we need regulatory sticks, and not the carrots at best of carbon exchanges, or the toothless Jell-O of Paris Accord agreements.

Mainly, I've said that one of three countries/groups in the world needs to adopt a serious carbon tax PLUS carbon tariff on imports. The WTO allows this; Paul Krugman was saying this at the same time I did.

You have to have a country big enough for the tariff to affect a lot of other countries, of course. That leaves the U.S. and China, and maybe Japan, and the EU as a group, if its individual member states would agree to a bloc-wide policy. Individually, Germany just doesn't have the throw weight, I think, though it might from how interconnected EU trade is. On the other hand, for both better and worse, this might finish shattering the EU.

A bonus of a carbon tariff is that it makes a domestic carbon tax more palatable.

Of course, were the US to go this route, measuring carbon emissions elsewhere, especially with, say, a China that won't admit its own general air pollution problems, would be tough.

Not any more.

Enter Climate TRACE. Per Yale Climate Connections, it allows a much greater degree of tracking carbon emissions than before. I don't know if it's quite granular enough to meet my ideas. That's doubly true if it relies in part on voluntary participation, as the sensor installation part certainly does. But it's still a big leap forward.