[RedDevil]

The fault is not with taxation as a principle, but the way it is implemented.

How can a performance car be taxed more than its total purchase price while a comparable car that is 10% more efficient is only affected for say 25%?
The few hundred gallons the first burns more are in no way in proportion to the tens of thousands in added tax...

Let alone that the really expensive sports cars, where taxes can exceed a million, will likely burn very little fuel at all as they hardly get used.
You are taxed for possession of a certain type of vehicle, not for the CO2 it actually causes.
It just isn't fair.

Now they want to make people pay per mile. Because that's 'fair' - you drive more, you pay more. It does not matter how you drive; whether you get 5 mpg or 500 mpg, you just pay the same.
Oh yeah, that's really going to help.

In my eyes the only real and direct approach can be to tax fuel in such a way that it reflects the CO2 and eventually other pollutants it causes by getting burned. So the amount of fuel consumed drives the cost.
Fuel would be more expensive, but other costs would go down.
That motivates people to drive more economically. Exceptionally dirty cars (e.g. creating more pollutants from the same amount of fuel as other cars do) could be taxed on top of that, but it has to be proportional..
Only then will the interests of economy and ecology align, and will your invisible hand really pull in the right direction.