What will never happen is addressing climate change through social engineering.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/20/climate-change-to-slow-globa...
A carbon tax (at least without going 100% to sequestration) is only an behavior penalty. It's not even a net gain, it's just slowing a net loss. There's nothing innovative about that.
The sequestration part of the equation is where there's potential for technological breakthroughs. If we go carbon negative, it won't be because it requires a change in lifestyle, but because we find a cheap way to offset our carbon generation. And I mean literally pulling carbon from thin air (or water). Not using accounting trickery to buy some emission "offset" that a developing population surely would have hypothetically used, had you not paid them cash money (along with a sizable percentage to some broker who has friends in DC).
I think you would find much less opposition, no matter the government's cost, once 1) a plan is laid out that doesn't require a regression in anyone's lifestyle, and 2) doesn't involve a punitive cost to sustain that lifestyle, and 3) doesn't involve any component resembling wealth re-distribution, or buying credit that amounts to paying someone else to not do something.
If you're going for utilitarianism, pick a more politically agreeable utility, like actual sequestration, if you want to be successful.
It prevents addition of co2, but does not subtract. Focus on encouraging and incentives for subtraction, not preventing addition. If you want people to get on board. (I get that reducing emissions means less to sequester. That's thinking short term, and beyond minor cutbacks, a political loser. A successful solution won't require that to be effective.)
I'm saying anything punitive and negatively coercive is the wrong approach. It might technically work, but won't ever be successful politically. Unless we go full authoritarian regime. As soon as a large enough portion of the population is hit with having to change lifestyle, it's done for. Focus on solutions that don't require that.
How do you foresee the other environmental pressures (water, soil etc) being resolved? Are we merely maturing through a series of dirty technologies and are on the cusp of a clean tech revolution that will allow us to arbitrarily increase the Earth's carrying capacity? At what point does absolute decoupling of growth and resource consumption occur?
I do hope you're right, as it seems like the only viable path, but I am still doubtful.
In retrospect, the advocacy of regressive policies like "everyone should fly less" will be just another chapter of the long serious of luddites thinking the only solution to problems is to reverse technological progress in the face of new, unexpected problems raised through the continual growth of the global economy.