On Tuesday, June 21, several dedicated activists from Asheville will be in Washington, D.C., to join hundreds of others from all over the United States in lobbying Congress for a real, bipartisan solution to climate chaos.
The organization, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, is proposing a plan for a “carbon fee and dividend.” This is a revenue-neutral carbon tax with all revenue returned directly to households, which will reduce greenhouse gas emissions 52 percent below 1990 levels within 20 years, while growing the economy and saving lives.
This payment would benefit poor and lower-income people the most. It would offset the higher prices of fossil fuels, while encouraging investment in energy efficiency and renewables. Only the biggest fossil-fuel users (who tend to be the wealthiest consumers) would lose.
The concept has received significant bipartisan support, and dozens of Asheville leaders, including city Council members, business owners and faith leaders, have signed on to a “leader letter” calling for climate action.
To help the lobbying effort, Citizens’ Climate Lobby urges everyone who wants to support this sensible solution to make calls to their senator and representatives on Monday, June 20. To find your Congress people, and for ideas on what to say, please visit www.citizensclimatelobby.org and click on “take action.” Your grandchildren will thank you!
— Cathy Holt
Asheville
A revenue neutral carbon fee with a dividend, makes enormous sense!
Economists and scientists say it is the best solution to the threat of our carbon emissions.
It is not a tax. This way citizens would RECEIVE the carbon fees as a monthly check, for example. That would protect us from price spikes in dirty energy. Polluters PAY the fees, so it holds fossil fuel corporations responsible for the damages. or externalitites, they cause, hundreds of billions of dollars per year (Harvard School of Medicine).
It would more rapidly lower emissions than regulations, as happened in BC Canada with a similar, popular policy. BC lowered both emissions and taxes with their fees.
A study by respected non-partisan Regional Economic Modeling, Inc. found the dividends would help to create 2.9 million additional jobs in 20 years, while reducing emissions much faster than regulations. http://citizensclimatelobby.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/REMI-National-SUMMARY.pdf
To those who reject the science: perhaps nothing will change your mind. But what have you got against cleaner air, less asthma
in our kids, fewer heart attacks, and more money (the dividend) in your pockets?
To those accepting the science: Any effort to limit the problem of climate change is worth it. For example: the cost of sea level rise ALONE is so great that no effort to prevent it is unwarranted.
Why even bother with the paid deniers and front groups who thrive creating the delay of a false debate?
Elon Musk was asked “what can we do? ” Musk: “I would say whenever you have the opportunity, talk to the politicians. Ask them to enact a carbon tax. We have to fix the unpriced externality [social cost]. I would talk to your friends about it and fight the propaganda from the carbon industry.”
Biggest HOAX on the planet…and we KNOW that if AVL city council likes it, then it’s probably heinous…
Proverbs 14:17