Being green only if it's not hurting your bottom-line (i.e. "not economicly crippling") doesn't helpt the environment.
So you propose deliberately hurting the economy in order to "help the environment"? Then mass unemployment and economic downturn or stagnation would be the inevitable consequence.
I for one feel, that high energy prices here in Germany (i.e. at the gas pump: $3,80 per gallon for all the non-standard's) lead to the development of economically vehicles.
Raising taxes in order to achieve a specific goal is a pseudo-economic solution which does seldom work, but causes grave consequences at least to the less wealthy part of the population. The theory here is that people will compensate for the tax raise with e.g. buying a car which uses less gas, but that idea totally ignores existing investments and transaction costs. If I own a car which is not depreciated completely (= having a value near zero), it is only economically reasonable for me to exchange it for a less consuming vehicle if the money saved on gas is higher than the cost resulting from selling the car and buying a new one (if gas prices are high, I will probably not get much money for my old gas-guzzler anyway). To make that economic incentive work, the gas price must be raised extremely, with the consequence that nearly no one would be able to drive any more (since that would be a call for revolution even with the lethargic, authority-loving Germans, politicians tend to be wise enough to not take it that far).
The idea of "Steuern durch Steuern" (steering through taxation) also does not take into account the fact that any bureacracy will adapt itself quickly to increasing revenue by spending all the available money for a multitude of purposes, but can never be able to adjust to a declining revenue stream. Therefore, even if the economic incentive through taxation would work and people would compensate by changing their behaviour, that would only lead to the government needing to compensate for the now-declining revenue stream, which would inevitably mean raising taxes again.
