money coming from? Not that I couldn't use the $1000. We all could. But I don't see how this helps the carbon issue.

The government would decide that, this year, we can afford to emit x number of tons of carbon dioxide. No one would be allowed to burn fossil fuels without a permit, and no permits would be issued beyond x amount.

With a limited number of permits available, the government would sell them to the highest bidders. The people or companies that wanted to burn these fuels would have to participate in the auction. The government would take all the money paid for permits and distribute it among all the people.

There would be a lot of details to work out. Would each individual driver have to get a permit? Presumably it would be easier to require the companies selling gasoline to buy permits, enough to cover the burning of all the gas they sell. What about carbon dioxide from other sources, like biomass? What about other greenhouse gases, like methane?

However those points are handled, the basic idea is to employ the vaunted "magic of the marketplace" -- the emissions that are most valuable are the ones for which people would pay the most for permits, so those emissions would continue. The reduction in carbon dioxide emissions would be achieved by reducing or eliminating the less valuable uses. This is arguably better than having the government decide which uses are less important.

A political benefit is that, with the distribution checks flowing to millions of voters, there would be strong support for continuing the program.