Your "cure" was to stop CO2 emissions... you said that on the CHANCE it might be harmful to the environment despite all the evidence to the contrary, that we should eliminate it. Reducing or eliminating CO2 emissions has devastating effects on the economy AND on the environment, with many ill thought of plans or just plain fraud going on that causes environmental harm. People are throwing away perfectly good products to replace them with eco friendly ones (the cost in pollution to produce them thousands of times the amount of pollution it "saves"). Power plants are shut down, areas are cleared to build more wind plants (which kill all the birds in the area), And so on.
There are economy-friendliy ways to start reducing emissions. The main problem is simply that it will bother the status quo, and companies will have to move a little.
If you use a semi-hard carbon-cap policy to first establish a maximum of emission the companies are going to be allowed to produce, based on the industry they are in. They are allowed to reject up to a certain amount of pollution before starting to pay a penalty fee (which should be harsh and proportional to the over-polluting, for reasons I will put below).
However, as opposed to most standards you usually give companies, which only penalise them if they don't respect the standards and don't give jackshit if you actually do better than the standards the law sets, companies should be allowed to run a negative balance on their emission. Let's say the best company in the power-production sector emits 20% less than the average power-producing companiy (because of measures taken here and there, and efficient management), they would have 20% of their "carbon credit" unused.
These credits could be sold off in a carbon-credit market, where companies who went over the allowed amount of emission should buy, unless they pay the hefty fine (the fine should be very high, as it will effectively puts an economic ceilling on the carbon credit price, which is innefficient)
Now, if you start your carbon-limitation economy without trying too squeeze too much out of it, you will potentially increase the profits of some more eco-friendly companies while potentially reducing the profits of others, but with a purely economical outlook rather than arbitrary taxes hammered on anybody's head.
Some special projects that would usually be economically nonviable might actually become more attractive for many, as the carbon break granted will fit nicely into the budget.
If you slowly but surely diminish the industry-wide carbon limit (slowly, in order to allow the industry to adapt with proper capital investment, and surely so the industry has no doubt that long-term investment will pay off), you might eventually (10 years) considerably reduce your industry's overall carbon emission without having to break your economy too much in the initial legislation. Business that were ran in environmentally-innefficient ways will progressively have to start to reform, or be put out of business. But other business will boom, as carbon-catcher businesses might start existing in order to provide the market with more carbon-credits.
If your industry struggle too much, the carbon-credit price will go up, and more carbon-catching business will appear. Also, with higher carbon-credit prices, companies will see that there is even more economical insentive to spend in eco-friendly ventures.
I see it as a Green Capitalist dream
You don't need the governement to do much in it, as the companies will find themselves the way to turn into greener form of themselves. The government's job will merely setting the ceilling price for the carbon penalty, setting the proper cap for industries based on the production levels (that might be complex, but not impossible).
Anyway, the whole idea is to give enterprises a benefit for doing more than the bare minimum. Right now, the only intensive a company has for doing "more" than what the law requires of it is good PR, or the generosity of its owners. However, not all administrator have the luxury of being generous with their company's asset for the environment (they might get censored by the administrative board, for example). With a money-benefit linked to green investments, it's going to be easier for everybody to do such actions.