For example: Exxon mobil profits in 2017 were 19.7 billion. Fukushima cleanup costs exceed 180 billion.
There is no way to do what you are proposing without massive price increases in electricity, gasoline and virtually every other good. I wouldn't be surprised if when you priced all of this in you discovered that people couldn't really afford electricity anymore.
Also this economy would never be able to have exports because the price of producing goods would just be insane.
The truth is we can't afford the externalities without an economic implosion that would realistically end with an extreme political group taking control in the ensuing chaos and undoing everything you are proposing.
Mitigating climate change is essentially going to cost all of the direct profit ever made by all the companies in the fossil fuel discovery, extraction, refining, and retailing businesses.
Think 85 trillion USD, real value. That's about 1/3rd of the total current wealth of the entire world, by my back of the envelope calculations.
The thing about externalities is: somebody pays, it's just not the person who caused them. Redirecting that cost back to the source would be a good thing. There would then be incentives to do the most efficient thing instead of the most wasteful thing. This would actually make everybody richer.
How much of our wealth is being wasted this way? I'm guessing that it's a lot.
For example: Exxon mobil profits in 2017 were 19.7 billion. Fukushima cleanup costs exceed 180 billion.
There is no way to do what you are proposing without massive price increases in electricity, gasoline and virtually every other good. I wouldn't be surprised if when you priced all of this in you discovered that people couldn't really afford electricity anymore.
Also this economy would never be able to have exports because the price of producing goods would just be insane.
The truth is we can't afford the externalities without an economic implosion that would realistically end with an extreme political group taking control in the ensuing chaos and undoing everything you are proposing.