An international carbon tax agreement

Jim Manzi makes a good point. If governments can't agree on the Doha Round, which would make everyone richer now and in the future, how can we expect them to agree on a worldwide carbon tax that could make us poorer now to promote the wealth of future generations?

Ha also adds that:

We should limit government investments to those topics that meet specific criteria. They should be related to detecting or ameliorating the effects of global warming, should serve a public rather than a private need, and should provide no obvious potential source of profit to investors if successful. Important examples include improved global climate prediction capability, visionary biotechnology to capture and recycle carbon dioxide emissions, or geo-engineering projects to change the albedo of the earth’s surface or atmosphere. [...] Of course, it would still be a government program, and therefore rife with inefficiencies.