“Who cares about all those poors, right?”

“Who cares about climate change when it means I’ll have to take the bus or apply for some electric car subsidy, right?”

Please don't argue in favour of electric car subsidies (or any other subsidies).

That's just needless paperwork, and never catches all use cases. Eg the guy who walks doesn't get an electric car subsidy. Or the guy who practices hypermiling on his ICE, vs the guy who drives his ICE like a maniac. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermiling

Much easier to just apply an emission tax (or a cap-and-trade program) and let people figure it out by themselves without extra paperwork and government favouritism.

Why not tax the rich more and use that money to help the poor emit less?

Eh, that's what eg income taxes are for.

If you want to do redistribution to help the poor, the impact of the overall tax system is important. You don't need to make every single tax progressive.

Individual taxes, especially sin taxes, should be designed to do their job as efficiently as possible.

That doesn’t work. As long as the cheap option is available that’s what people will use.

Unless you’re suggesting we tax the cheap option, in which case you’re saying the same thing.

I'm suggesting we tax the luxurious option and use that money to improve the cheap option.