Just for clarity. A carbon tax is literally the least the government can do to gently and wishfully encourage industry to decarbonize. The absolute minimum. It is not very effective, and populists can easily lie about it to leverage ignorant deplorable anger, but it is ‘technically’ very very slightly more than doing nothing.
As a more useful alternative, we could discourage oil and gas investment by levying a 100% corporate income surtax. We could set minimum standards for making our cities more walkable and… transitable (?) instead of sprawling automobile hellscapes that cannot help but bankrupt us. We could rebuild our passenger rail system and electrify it all, like civilized countries, and add useful reliable frequent high-speed service.
But just to dip a toe in the prospect of saving the habitability of the whole fucking planet, we have a quite moderate carbon tax that is revenue neutral for the federal government and costs no individual earning less than six-figures anything.
But instead we are collectively having an apoplectic fit over this trivial, minimal, alternative to active punitive and restorative legislation that could save us from this shit-show we have manufactured through petulant greed and irresponsibility.