A few states, and therefore a motivated group of Senators, would be hit disproportionately hard. Places like Wyoming and West Virginia drive a considerable part of their economy from coal, and fracking has led to natural gas windfalls in states like North Dakota.

You would imagine that some large carbon-intensive companies, like Koch or ExxonMobil, would also be impacted significantly.

EDIT: The counterpoint is that a gas tax in particular is quite regressive. The poor pay a larger portion of their income toward necessities like fuel to drive to work. They also are less likely to be able to afford that Tesla. Entry-level service workers can't work from home. They might be commuting large distances from cheaper outlying areas. There are many reasons why (if not managed properly) a carbon tax could hurt the wrong people.

It still seems like the right idea to me, though! We need to avoid calling it a 'tax' though, to avoid the Grover Norquist influence...

Those below the poverty line would see an increase in their energy costs at the pump and and home electric bills as energy producers raise rates to compensate (and the impoverished are the least able to convert their use, so will be the longest affected by the transition).

Interestingly, the aluminum smelters in the mountains behind Portland closed down when the datacenters moved in and bought all the cheap hydro electricity they used to use.

My guess is that a tax increase on electricity will hit the Google/Facebook/Amazon/Apple/Microsoft and other "cloud businesses" pretty hard...

Personally I think we should just buy the fossil fuel owners out at current market prices and shut them down as soon as possible. FUD in this area is just too effective to counter with logic or science so lets pay them off. If we wanted to be really clever we could do a 1 for 1 swap - Exxon we are buying your oil field and here is a wind farm in return.