What's really nutty is that if it were a tax and dividend system, the majority of households would actually end up with more money back in their pockets. That this hasn't already been implemented is absolutely maddening.

You're already taxed (potentially a lot) on fuel. Adding another tax that's harder to measure consumption for seems like a bad idea.

I'm not really stumping for the carbon tax here, it's mostly just a thought experiment on the relative significance of pricing carbon.

I have to add though, while carbon taxes would have challenges to implement, adding a carbon tax to fuel specifically is not hard to measure at all! We know exactly how much carbon is in the fuel. A $40/ton carbon tax means +$0.36 per gallon of gasoline.

P.S. The US federal fuel tax ($0.18) was last increased in 1993, and was not indexed to inflation.

The fuel tax generally doesn't even cover the full cost of roads. It doesn't even start paying for carbon offsets.

That's just because introducing a new tax opens a new avenue for taxes to increase in the future. Even if it's not significant now, the infrastructure will be in place to increase taxes later (after all, the first income tax was a measly 3%). Whether it's reasonable to expect this tax to increase significantly is of course a different question entirely, but the visceral gut reaction to yet another tax is somewhat understandable imo.

Now don't get me wrong, I am in favor of carbon taxing as it's probably one of the best tools we have to fight climate change. But the only way something like this is going to see widespread approval is if all of the proceeds are guaranteed to be paid back to the people and not disappear into the ether of government bureaucracy.