First a note on Al’s (may I call him Al?) proposal to replace payroll taxes with carbon taxes - it would be hard to make it revenue neutral because you cannot project how strongly the economy will react to the change, so it is hard to set the carbon tax levels in such a way that they will equal the revenue lost.

Here are my first thoughts on a counter proposal to Gore’s plan:

Cap carbon emissions and institute a carbon tax. When the coal power companies protest and shut down their plants (trying to get the people against reform by holding them hostage to blackouts - this would be the dangerous period in the plan) appropriate them using eminent domain laws (or whatever other laws may apply), paying them as little as possible because the plants are no longer profitable. Then either nationalize them or hand them over to non-profits, either way with mandates for all revenue to go into reducing carbon emissions from the plants in the near term and replacing them with carbon neutral renewables in the long term - and exempt them from the carbon tax so they can out-compete the remaining plants so they will become unprofitable and be appropriated as well. How do the oil companies work into this?

Tax oil and coal industries on profits already made from damaging the environment?