While I agree in principle with what you're putting forward, I think there are a couple of huge obstacles. One, good luck convincing politicians to sacrifice their projects to make room for #3. I understand the carbon tax would be more efficient, but in the short term there would a be a revenue loss, and most politicians would only care about that. Two, Without #3, the whole thing is a non-starter. It's a lofty academic idea that fits well into a forum like this; but without #3 happening, it boils down to "give me more of your money and I promise we'll fix it!", which is an unacceptable argument for lots of Americans (myself included, to be frank).
I personally hold that the best and most realistic solution is a headfirst, committed dive into nuclear energy.
Not obvious why #3 is impossible. You can forecast revenue changes from a carbon tax and revenue losses from an income tax, set rates accordingly, and adjust as you go. This is especially feasible if you have a 50 year timeframe.
Should be quite feasible to make it revenue neutral and this rob no politician of their project.
Nuclear would have been great 50 years ago! My argument is that the project I outlined above would have given market based incentive to make nuclear competitive.
If level headed people of all stripes had focussed on the problem it would have been solveable.
(Since I can’t edit my comment above, I should add for posterity: obviously not all environmentalists are bad at math or systems thinking, and some of them had sensible solutions. But we would have had better solutions if others joined too)
I personally hold that the best and most realistic solution is a headfirst, committed dive into nuclear energy.