If the democrats snapped their fingers and implemented a carbon tax, it would just cause violence and people to starve, not push us into green energy. The infrastructure just doesn't exist.
But it causes electric cars that avoid the carbon tax to have a market advantage over gasoline powered cars, so more people buy those. It causes non-carbon power generation methods to have a market advantage, so more people build those. As the infrastructure gets built to replace carbon, the amount of the dividend declines, but only because people are paying less in carbon tax because everyone is burning less carbon.
They did it in British Columbia.
I’m a big fan of this approach, which is actually bipartisan-ly designed.
Check the video in that link.
A carbon tax is regressive. All energy and resource taxes are regressive, since the rich can easily afford more expensive energy. Carbon restrictions are also regressive on a macroeconomic global scale as poorer countries are often more reliant on older and simpler fossil fuel technologies. The only exceptions there are countries with a lot of hydroelectric resources (which is also an old proven tech). A stricter international climate accord would severely punish or even bankrupt many poorer countries, while richer countries would be able to afford newer "green" energy or nuclear power. Both of these are too expensive and technically sophisticated for early stage developing nations.
I really think just investing heavily in the build out of alternatives is a far better strategy and the only non-regressive way to do it. Build and scale the new stuff until it can compete on price with the old stuff and then set the market loose. Since the new stuff is now cheaper, the market will replace the old stuff. Meanwhile as we use more fossil fuels they are getting more costly to obtain, so it's really when the two curves intersect that change will happen.