In any event, I'm with you on the larger problems not being solved by a carbon tax - but in many ways its addressing an economic system which has essentially subsidized polluters for centuries, never assessing upon the producers and consumers of these products the full cost of their use and factoring this into price.
So its been a bit of a wlld-west, free pass for the oligarchs on this for ages. This is like, the first attempt to just start putting things on a track with an economic system that actually *does* factor in cost - the way we're doing it today is pretty inefficiently wasting resources through impacts to human health and long term sustainability threatened by pollution.
Now, maybe the whole thing is a fool's errand right - because its too little too late, and the predictions that - a decade ago - looked on the high end of things are looking pretty likely for temperature increase this century. Minimum of 2 degrees, likely more. Maybe the entire capitalist system *can't* actually respond to this, and the whole idea of capitalism itself is the problem and no little tax is going to amount to much given the way our whole system is ordered.
George Monbiot had me reconsidering the whole "natural capitalism" thing I glommed onto in the 90s - maybe it is too late:
Put a price on nature? We must stop this neoliberal road to ruin | George Monbiot | Environment | The Guardian
In any event, why not nudge things in the right direction - in a way that is shown to have reduced emissions *and* driven some cash into BC coffers.... so - where's the downside? Its too big an issue so we should just give up - the status quo is better than status quo and a win-win carbon tax?