That's a perfectly legitimate point, because doing good on the left hand and doing bad on the right hand is not necessarily a good solution.
One of the problems with the flow-through shares and a variety of others, even SR and ED, is that they were gamed by a variety of companies, and they fell out of favour as policy instruments around here for a long time, because banks were claiming SR and ED credits and flow-through shares became the annual game around budgets.
I wonder whether, even given the limitations of a carbon tax and a cap and trade system, that may be a way to incent good behaviour and punish bad behaviour. The legitimate point you make, Mr. Binnion, is that it may be too crude.