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Electrification, Why not tax incentives?

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[quote user="cordon"] Currently, our government is pushing "carbon credits" as a compromise that imposes carbon emission restrictions but theoretically lets the market make a rational decision on who actually gets to pay them.  I don't know if this makes a lot of free-market people satisfied or not, but at least it's an attempt.In the case of Diesel engines the government is imposing ever tighter restrictions on emissions.  This is also a market distortion.  If it weren't, the companies that make Diesel engines would do it on their own, without a government rule.  It appears, however, that the market does not take into account long term effects such as cancer, tuberculosis, and climate change, all of which will have a cost in the future.  I suspect that companies' decisions might come out a bit differently, if they were to take these, and other, long term costs into account.[/quote]I don't see anything but coercion in a carbon credit trading system if government mandates it, which is the ultimate goal.  It imposes a burden on everyone who consumes beyond a certain limit.  The only freedom is the freedom to not consume beyond that limit.When the government takes into account certain things like cancer, tuberculosis, and climate change, and mandates actions that are said to prevent those threats, there is a risk that the government is overstating the danger in order to impose edicts for the motive of expanding government.  Or the government may be influenced to satisfy certain political lobbies that are likewise overstating or misrepresenting a particular threat and offering to remedy it in order to expand their power.  I certainly do not want the government, for the purpose of preventing climate change, to force the railroads to electrify, nor mandate outcomes that require it. Unless a threat is obvious and convincing, I think it's far safer for a society to ignore it rather than to be forced into a collective remedy, especially one that may have ulterior motives. There is also the tendency for governments to understate the cost of their mandates.  In Minnesota, the legislature has mandated that 20% of electricity must be produced by renewable means within 13 years.  They promise there will be no added cost.  They tell us they expect it to lower the cost of power.
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