Yeah, it's been tried but people like you don't want us to go that route either.  Case in point:  WA state last year.  They had a REVENUE NEUTRAL carbon tax on the ballot - i.e. the state gets no more money than it would without the carbon tax because they were going to make corresponding decreases to other taxes to offset it.  Thus, carbon-polluting sources would be encouraged to "clean up their act" so to speak to de-incentivize them.   It didn't pass.  

The scientific "solutions" are very clear.  We need to pull back our carbon emissions in a very serious manner in a fairly short time frame.  (The IPCC recommended trying to limit global temp increase to 2 deg. C above background but that ship has pretty much sailed already.)  HOW we do that is a policy issue, unfortunately, and an entire half of our country (the R's, mostly) doesn't want to do anything about it.  And here we sit fiddling while Rome burns, so to speak.