Amazing comment @chekohler!
Totally agree.... tax itself doesn't mean anything if the taxed income doesn't go towards developing alternative industries. It kills me that a lot of the US States used the money they got from VW for 'dieselgate' on totally non-environmental things, even though the complaint was that VWs were polluting.

I'm not sure I totally understand how market forces are self-regulating... doesn't the market only care about what's profitable? How does it self-regulate at all? The market will literally try to get away with anything to be as profitable as possible... colluding, cheating, polluting, destroying people's lives, etc.

I personally think a meat tax (or a greater water tax) would change people's habits pretty massively. Think about how many super cheap fast food meals there are... like McDonalds, Arbys or Wendys, or how many super processed, super cheap, frozen meals there are in the supermarkets... It kills me that veggies are so much more expensive than all this processed junk food... but a meat or water tax would solve a lot of these problems. Suddenly beef becomes a once a week thing instead of being eaten most days. Maybe people move to chicken or fish? Or even insect protein... which is all better for the environment than beef.

During the cold-war era, the US government spent huge amounts of money on research in agriculture - mainly to show up Russia... but they effectively changed the world. They basically invented supermarkets. Individual companies can't always do the R&D they want to do, and remain profitable, so the money from the meat tax could go to so many environmental initiatives... which are so sorely needed that it's ridiculous.