Canada, for example, recently offered rebates to offset a planned carbon tax, helping people adjust to the change. But conservatives have pledged to undo Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plan, saying it could cause economic damage, and only six of 10 provinces are going along with it.

The French in the past have been far more tolerant than most societies in accepting high taxes on gasoline and diesel fuels. The cost of a gallon of gas in France is about $6 or more — with taxes accounting for about 60 percent of that — compared with about $3 on average in the United States, where high fuel taxes have been a nonstarter.

But the French government’s tax increase, written into law before President Emmanuel Macron was elected, proved a tipping point for hard-pressed families already laboring under some of Europe’s highest overall tax burdens.

Rather than spurring the effort to cut fossil fuel use, the misstep now threatens to set it back.

It angered those who can least afford to pay more to get to work and drop off their children at school. Fossil fuel champions — including President Trump — denounced the tax. And the backlash over it landed with a thud during the critical United Nations climate change negotiations underway in Poland, which Édouard Philippe, France’s prime minister, was forced to skip because of bubbling unrest at home.

More than that, the decision this week to annul the tax increase came after protests nationwide turned violent, causing four deaths and millions of dollars in damage, and injuring more than 250 people.

If nothing else, the maelstrom in France showed that the political challenge of how to create incentives for people to move away from fossil fuels requires much more than raising a tax on gas at the pump or subsidizing solar panels.