http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/3/10/133530/115#7

Carbon based energy just went up again in the form of coal prices, natural gas and of course gasloine and diesel prices are already on a tear.  There's a tax, huge profits for these industries, budget/mortgage breaking burden for families.

Fossil, nuclear, and agribizz (ethanol), all get huge subsidies, in the form of special tax breaks targeted to each indistry.  Designed by lobbyists for each industry, then government official are paid to vote them in.  There is no doubt about this.

Cutting the subsidies would cause these industries to pass the cost on to consumers (at triple the price), they would call it a "tax" imposed on them by environmentalists.  Let them try to make the case, every time they scream tax hike, we call it cutting corporate welfare.  Corruption based, undeserved subsidies to greedy monopolists.

Then divert a part of the savings (there are 10s of billion per year in these subsidies) to a 10 cent per kwh subsidy directly to investors in renewables and conservation and smart grid technology.  That's around 60 cents per electrical equivalent to a gallon of gas.

This would take the burden (tax?) of soaring energy prices off of us all.  The corporations will be dragged kicking and screaming, to eventually monopolize these new energy systems.  So it goes.  But it will get done this way.

Try taxing carbon to get the price up, and it'll unelect every green politician in 2010.  

So yeah, price it, but use some practical political reality to do that.