Although I think that it would never work with today’s society and technology level, broadly speaking I think this is the right sort of approach.
I was sat in the station car park the other day waiting for my train. A businessman comes out of the station and gets into his v8 sport Range Rover, and floors it away. That car is burning 3 times the petrol and 4 times the emissions of my small Honda, which performs the same basic function. He is obviously a successful person, so therefore has the right to pollute at many times the level of a normal person because, hey, capitalism.
Remember that there is not going to be much of a planet to live on in about 100 years due to the inaction of the current generations. They’re too drunk on the spoils of capitalism to care.
Our children, and their children will look back in the future and see our generation and the previous being the generation that could have done something, but failed.
I see it as a failure of all governments. They need to tackle this together but they’re too busy worrying about power.
As to the claim that the rich would simply pay more- tax it exponentially. Make Range Rover man pay 100k p/a for his greed. He’s soon be driving a Honda.
Use that money for carbon capture technologies. Make certain unavoidable use (ie getting to work) exempt and target un needed flamboyance.
Bottom line is we are all fucked over the next 50 years because everyone thought of a reason to do nothing, and nothing got done. I appreciate much of what I write is simplistic, but at the end of the day, something needs doing and doing fast. Remember, only a tiny percentage of people are responsible for a huge amount of damage, and those people should be paying more for the solution.