I think you're right; market forces, left alone, are unlikely to realign incentives within a desirable time-frame. This seems to explain Gates' stance.

However, the creative capitalist would argue that rather than penalizing fossil fuel companies (via Carbon tax), governments would do better to reward innovators via more 'green tax credits' and like financial incentives. You get the same* overall impact, just with less political push-back and more R&D, driven BY capitalism.

And by the way, Gates invented "Creative Capitalism" (https://www.fpsct.org/uploaded/faculty/johnsonc/U_S_History/...).