It isn't beyond our control if we actually baked in the cost of co2 emissions into the cost of the goods and services we use. That said, these things end up being very hard to calculate.
I think it makes more sense to put the cost on the emissions themselves (i.e. their production), not on the end-products. In a perfect world these two approaches would be equivalent, but since there are relatively few emission sources compared to end products, I think it would be easier to enforce.
The problem with mixing carbon taxes with global trade in general is that if some countries don't participate in carbon taxation, then carbon-intensive production will just shift to those countries. Game-theoretically, it's a relatively unstable equilibrium because if all countries are participating, then a country that suddenly refuses carbon taxation could stand to benefit enormously.
Well, there is a solution to that: border tax adjustments.
Carbon taxes — and I mean at the well, not those bureaucratic, corruption-prone cap-and-trade schemes – are the simplest, cheapest, fastest way to get a carbon-free economy off the ground. And if you make them revenue-neutral, you can get conservatives on board as well (look up "fee and dividend").
