Putting a price on carbon makes sense, whether through a carbon tax, a carbon fee and dividend program, or by directly having fossil fuel corporations acknowledge and absorb the cost of the damages their products cause—you know, pollution causing sickness, greenhouse gas emissions causing the world to grow hotter and less hospitable for all. The current practice of pricing carbon is to pretend we don’t price carbon, a weird hushing of reality. The reality is that these costs are already being paid by all of us.

These costs are not paid by the fossil fuel industry.

Sure, if the fossil fuel industry had to cover the liability of their products negative consequences, the price of fossil fuel would be higher. Instead, the costs are hidden, even excused by regulatory agencies so that the industry does not have to account for social, environmental, or systemic costs otherwise offloaded onto the public.

Do you know how expensive climate change is today? Do you know how much more expensive climate change will get in a decade, a half-century, a century? Best start that special savings account!

Many Industries Account for the Externalized Costs

Despite the fossil fuel industry having started a century and a half ago, Big Oil is still getting a lot of sweetheart deals. What’s interesting is how few other industries manage to get their own sweetheart deals. The chart below breaks out several major industries where the external costs are part of the cost of business.

The awful part of the story is that other industries have their lobbyists and champions (vassals?) in Congress and the White House, and that with the rise of dark money schemes (well before Citizens United, by the way—read Jane Mayer’s Dark Money, from 2016 if you’re sleeping at night), the trend has been to loosen regulations for many industries. The net effect is to increase these industries’ profits, but the costs associated with the industries don’t go away. These costs simply get passed on, typically indirectly and therefore under the radar, but the costs are still there. The fossil fuel industry remains the reigning queen of significant cost passed on—Shhh!—to everyone else.

Still, the trend in Washington these days would have more and more industries join that club. Reducing regulations is one main tool. Cancelling laws, another; think about the consequence of dropping the Glass-Steagall Act in relation to the 2008 crash.

We’re Paying for Carbon… Unless You’re a Shareholder

How much will fossil fuel pollution and the consequences of climate change cost the world in 2025, 2050, and 2100? You’ll find all sorts and ranges of numbers answering this question, but the thing these numbers have in common is that they’re huge. Here’s an AI Overview for this question:

The global economic cost of climate change and fossil fuel pollution is projected to reach tens of trillions of dollars annually, rapidly compounding over the coming decades. According to major macroeconomic climate studies (such as those by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Network for Greening the Financial System), the estimated damages are broken down as follows:

• • 2025: $2 trillion to $4 trillion in annual damages. By 2025, the world is already experiencing a permanent GDP reduction of roughly 1% to 3% compared to a baseline economy without climate change, driven by intensified extreme weather and health costs from fossil fuel emissions.
  • 2050: $38 trillion in annual damages. Experts project a 19% to 20% reduction in global GDP by mid-century regardless of aggressive future emission cuts, as past emissions have already locked in these near-term economic shocks.
  • 2100: $100 trillion to $150+ trillion in annual damages. If global temperatures rise by 3°C or more, the world faces a staggering 50% or greater permanent drop in global GDP, with certain regions experiencing near-total economic collapse.

Key Economic Impact Drivers

The total cost is a combination of direct climate impacts and the hidden social costs of burning fossil fuels:

• • Agricultural Collapse: Drastic declines in crop yields due to shifting weather patterns, severe droughts, and desertification.
  • Infrastructure Destruction: Trillions required to rebuild or relocate coastal cities due to rising sea levels, alongside damage to roads, grids, and bridges from extreme storms.
  • Health and Pollution Costs: Millions of premature deaths annually from air pollution and heatwaves, leading to lost labor productivity and overwhelmed healthcare systems.
  • Labor Productivity Loss: Extreme heat limits safe working hours, particularly in agriculture, construction, and manufacturing.

When you don’t have to cover all the costs of your product, you increase profit. When you don’t have to cover all the costs of your product, you can sell your product for less. Fossil fuels seem economically competitive with clean energy, but Big Oil is running a cheat. For all the complaining about subsidies for clean energy (much of which has also been crushed by President Big Oil Stooge), that money is a tiny fraction relative to the avoided costs the fossil fuel industry enjoys. You know who doesn’t get to enjoy these avoided costs? The rest of us—indeed, the world—because the costs of pollution sickening and killing people and the costs of high carbon emissions changing our world’s climate for the worse can’t be avoided.

It isn’t a matter of whether we should have a price on carbon. We’re already paying it.