A broad carbon tax with offsetting rebates would be a good start. It's a free market solution that requires minimal direct government intervention, and will have effects across all sectors. Start with a level that wouldn't be too great a shock, then ramp up on a pre-planned schedule so businesses and individuals can plan ahead.
BC implemented a carbon tax in 2008:
In 2008, the province implemented North America’s first broad-based carbon tax, proving that it is possible to reduce emissions while growing the economy. Between 2007 and 2015, provincial real GDP grew more than 17%, while net emissions declined by 4.7%.https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/climate-chang...
Obviously a 4.7% decline over a decade isn't enough, but it's better than a 17% or greater increase. Increasing the tax should increase the effect. (Of course, even with rebates making it revenue neutral, it will also cause some pain for those in industries that are heavy producers of greenhouse gasses, but unfortunately some amount of disruption is inevitable with the degree of change that is required.)
Also, allow for negative carbon tax on carbon extraction—there are already systems in place that can extract carbon from the air, and planned systems that should be able to do so for ~$100/tonne currently. This should keep improving, but if we rely on carbon extraction to be profitable without considering the positive externality, it will be needlessly delayed, and we need to get started scaling this up asap.
Finally, even with these changes, it's likely that some form of geoengineering will be required as a stopgap, to prevent temperatures rising to catastrophic levels while we're in the process of bringing CO2 emissions down, and then negative. So we should be doing small-scale testing of the most promising interventions (such as stratospheric aerosol injection) now, to prepare for when they're needed.
BC implemented a carbon tax in 2008:
In 2008, the province implemented North America’s first broad-based carbon tax, proving that it is possible to reduce emissions while growing the economy. Between 2007 and 2015, provincial real GDP grew more than 17%, while net emissions declined by 4.7%. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/climate-chang...
Obviously a 4.7% decline over a decade isn't enough, but it's better than a 17% or greater increase. Increasing the tax should increase the effect. (Of course, even with rebates making it revenue neutral, it will also cause some pain for those in industries that are heavy producers of greenhouse gasses, but unfortunately some amount of disruption is inevitable with the degree of change that is required.)
Also, allow for negative carbon tax on carbon extraction—there are already systems in place that can extract carbon from the air, and planned systems that should be able to do so for ~$100/tonne currently. This should keep improving, but if we rely on carbon extraction to be profitable without considering the positive externality, it will be needlessly delayed, and we need to get started scaling this up asap.
Finally, even with these changes, it's likely that some form of geoengineering will be required as a stopgap, to prevent temperatures rising to catastrophic levels while we're in the process of bringing CO2 emissions down, and then negative. So we should be doing small-scale testing of the most promising interventions (such as stratospheric aerosol injection) now, to prepare for when they're needed.