Yes, but this is irrelevant. France just threw away a political year on a gas tax they had to roll back. The political fallout, in the form of the yellow vest

Yes, but this is irrelevant. France just threw away a political year on a gas tax they had to roll back. The political fallout, in the form of the yellow vest conservative movement, may well delay further progressive climate reform by another election cycle at least. The fact that a gas tax makes logical sense does not matter, what matters is if it has real world efficacy. If the climate reform you are passing is causing backlashes that nullify it, we just wasted precious time for no reason. It does not matter how much you think the voting public should just get over themselves. As an example: There is broad public support for substantially increased rates in top marginal taxation and in capital gains. Raise the money there and use it to subsidize low-carbon or negative-carbon alternatives. This also highlights that what works is contextual. To my knowledge there is very little opposition to the ongoing rollout of cap-n-trade in the EU. And of course, if you can pass carbon taxation schemes, they are fantastic since they simply pull the external costs into the price and let the market sort it out.