That's my problem, if I may say, with people who advocate carbon taxes. They operate on the premise that there was no intelligent life before 1960.
I mean, all these ideas have been around for a very long time. Why did business spontaneously behave in a green way in the past? Well, it's because when you buy raw materials and you throw them through the smokestack or throw them in the river, you're wasting money. There's always been an incentive for firms to extract the most value possible out of everything they pay for. This is why over time everything becomes more efficient. This is why pollution is spontaneously turned into valuable by-products. This is why our economy has become more self-contained. The profit motive, I would argue, provides all the incentive you need.
Of course, you need to penalize people who commit real environmental crimes, such as releasing stuff in rivers, but it's not a carbon tax you need; you need to hold firms responsible. In the past we had lawsuits. If you dumped your trash in your neighbour's backyard, he could sue you. That was an additional incentive not to do it, which I would argue worked pretty well. All this talk about green technology is completely historical. At some point, who are you going to believe, these theories that have not been proven or the images that I've given you?