> what are climate change discussions, if not a discussion about externalities?
Climate change has been discussed for well over a half century, yet one of the main priorities of the current administration has been to hamstring renewable energy and promote coal and oil. I think it's pretty fair to say the issue is being ignored.
Carbon tax, plastic bag tax, etc. are from the learnings from economic externalities that is applied to climate policy. Other non climate externalities based policies are sugar tax, alcohol/cigarette/drug tax, education, healthcare, etc.