@ Individual,
my understanding is that this is a tax that is mainly directed at the top 500 companies that pollute, to get them to change their energy policies. Anyone household under $150k is not going to really pay any extra once their tax returns are submitted.

I personally think that this problem is so big that asking individuals to fix it is just crazy. We can't and we won't. What, are we all going to leave our homes and go live in teepees?

No, this requires major government reforms to how we plan our cities. Modern, comfortable, trendy, desirable New Urbanism and Ecocities can produce cities that move people and goods, not cars. They are human scaled, not car scaled. They are built to be satisfying and diverse and only use 10% or 20% of the land of suburbia, yet every family will have easy access to the local parks and playgrounds and mothers can just walk their babies to playgroups within a 5 minute pram walk.

It saves on embodied energy in tunnels and cables and pipes and drains and telephony and concrete and bitumen, and returns the local suburban wasteland to parks and forests and agriculture and dairy farming. If we rezone suburbs now, they could be largely rebuilt through natural attrition and retrofitting over the next 20 to 30 years.

Then there's GenIV nukes coming that will eat waste and run the world for 500 years on just today's waste. We need governments to rezone suburbia and allow nukes. Then we'll restore the local environment and have abundant clean electricity as we do so.

Lastly, re: global governance issues: this is why I'm a fan of global Federation. We need global legislative reform to help manage the global corporate elites. We need a global DEMOCRACY rather than dirty diplomatic deals done behind closed doors.
http://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/reform-world/