The idea's right here, a tax on private jet fuel. It's the details that are awry

This is not a bad idea, despite being about climate change and also in The Guardian:

Our legislation would increase fuel taxes for private jet travel from the current $0.22 to nearly $2 a gallon – the equivalent of an estimated $200 a metric ton of a private jet’s CO2 emissions – and remove existing fuel tax exemptions for private flight activities that worsen the climate crisis, like oil or gas exploration.

We advocate the carbon tax so we should, must and do welcome proposals to impose the carbon tax.

There are a few problems here. If emissions from flying are a bad idea then emissions from flying are a bad idea. There’s no reason why only private jets should pay such taxes - government ones should as well. So too should commercial ones. That goose and gander thing really does apply to Pigou Taxes upon externalities.

Of course, the rate is wrong, should be more like 80 cents so as to reach the $80 social cost of carbon. There’s the usual American political foolishness about hypothecation of tax revenues. Instead of allocating that revenue to some specific subject better to simply put it into the general fund. There’s absolutely nothing at all about climate change that says government should get bigger. Only that the revenue for government should perhaps come from different places.

We spend enough time around here berating people for proposing very silly things to do about climate change. Here we’ve at least the beginnings of a sensible suggestion. Yes, the solution to aviation is the carbon tax. Because people should pay the full price of their actions and that should be visible in prices. Once those costs are included then of course we are finished with the subject. The only flying that will take place is that which is producing more value than the damages caused. That is, the only aviation left after a carbon tax will be that which increases human utility.

Which is, after all, the point of the game itself - civilisation’s aim is to maximise human utility.