"The downside to this, of course, is that the public is used to paying X per kilowatt hour, and they'd inevitably have to pay Y were carbon taxed - even if every carbon producing plant was closed tomorrow, renewables in general are more expensive today, and there is only so much economies of scale can do to bring that down."

And of course the upside of increased cost per kilowatt is that people become more interested in lowering their power consumption. It becomes more economically viable to buy low energy bulbs, cut the cost of heating water (one of the biggest domestic energy uses) by installing heat exchanger/solar thermal/heat pumps...

Actually become aware of their supply needs by buying monitoring tools - there is a reason why this has become a profitable product: http://www.diykyoto.com/ie/

@Carbon, Carbon, Carbon

A major part of almost every one of our energy production cycles involves massive amount of carbon dioxide being emitted.

Methane extracted as natural gas is a greenhouse gas, but guess what, we burn it to produce Carbon Dioxide and Water - i found a nice pie chart: http://www.whatsyourimpact.eu.org/methane-sources.php

My point is this, tackling methane alone will not do much to help the problem, it is a much smaller part of the issue, and if we can't fix the 'carbon market' or our current levels of carbon dioxide output, how do you think we will do any better fighting on two fronts?

Do you want the politicians/climate change activists to change their tune now and confuse the issue further?