Full agreement with you on content but not semantic form.
This is interesting in part because it parallels the somewhat more advanced water commodification debate underway (Doug gets a bit of this by subbing to the debate list, but there's a more surgical listserve, water-warriors, which has picked it up too).
One of the conflicts amongst marxists doing water work is whether the commodification of water reflects the drive to price according to short-run marginal cost (my position), or whether it's based on a reading of the private versus social commodity described in Vol 1 of Das Kapital (this is Erik Swyngedouw's and Susan Spronk's position, which is very strong in abstract terms but not much use in day-to-day struggle). The commodification process means that large water consumers pay flat or even declining prices per drop, given economies of scale, and pressure on the water company (whether public or private sector isn't so important) to *not* distort the market. That means much higher prices for people who consume lower amounts. We have some seminal case studies in South Africa.
But moving to energy, if you are serious about carbon taxes, Doug, you'd soon get into a situation where *punitive* taxes would need to be applied to large per capita users (consumers and firms) so as to cross-subsidise a minimal lifeline energy use for everyone else (including African peasants for example). And to do that is *not* going to work with a market-mechanism approach, I'd say, Doug. On the contrary, s an *anti-market* mechanism is required - a free lifeline for all plus rapidly rising (concave) block tariff, that doesn't 'get the prices right'. And that's the damn thing about the market-oriented enviros: they think that market solutions can deal with market-created problems (correcting externalities). They don't quite get it, that it will require an anti-market carbon tax - a very very high price for hedonistic energy consumption (such as my own given a regrettable desire to depart frequently from Durban and Joburg airports) - to properly disincentivize excess CO2 emissions.
So don't call a *serious* luxury tax on CO2 a market mechanism, ok? They will coopt you and your ideas faster than the other way around, comrade.