If the intent of the new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to shock the world about the looming climate crisis, it certainly succeeds. By most accounts, a nearly unthinkable global shift away from fossil fuels must happen in the next dozen years.

Given those stakes, would any self-described socialist endorse a climate policy that inflicts massive price hikes on working people? You wouldn’t think so, but that very idea was floated in a recent Jacobin article as something the Left should energetically embrace. Yet doing so would waste the energy of the burgeoning climate justice movement, while likely doing little to create a more livable future.

The proposal, coauthored by Anders Fremstad and Mark Paul and backed by the People’s Policy Project, is as plain as can be: dramatically increase the costs associated with almost every facet of life in order to extract some money from fossil-fuel companies. The tool would be a carbon tax, which the authors admit “burdens the poor more than the rich.”