By Steve Valk
While it looks like the climate and energy bill from senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman won’t be released until mid-April at the earliest, Citizens Climate Lobby has a bill ready to go – The Carbon Fee and Dividend Act. Funny how quickly things can move when you’re not trying to get the blessing of the American Petroleum Institute.
Let’s face it: Any legislation that makes the fossil fuel industry happy probably won’t reduce carbon-dioxide to levels that are safe and sustainable. That’s why we didn’t ask the barons of carbon-based energy for input on our proposal. Instead, we turned to scientists like Dr. James Hansen for advice on the maximum safe level of CO2 our atmosphere should hold and how to go about reducing CO2 to that level.
His answers, laid out clearly and convincingly in his new book, “Storms of My Grandchildren,” are as follows:
- We have to reduce CO2 levels from the current 389 parts per million to 350 ppm.
- To achieve this, we must stop burning fossil fuels, transitioning as quickly as possible to clean energy by placing a predictable and steadily-increasing fee on carbon.
The experts inside the Washington Beltway will tell us that we’re being naïve and unrealistic to write legislation without cutting deals with the powerful fossil fuel lobby. They have obscene amounts of money to pour into public relations and political campaigns – not to mention a Supreme Court decision that allows them to break any member of Congress who goes against them. For decades they’ve funded think tanks that confuse the public about the science of climate change. Those experts will tell us we’re playing the part of Don Quixote tilting at electricity-generating wind mills and that no politician wants the thankless task of playing Sancho.
What gives us the gall to think we can defy such a powerful lobby?
Simply put, we wrote a bill that’s a good deal for the Earth and a good deal for the American people.
A good deal for the American people? If folks have to pay more for energy, how is that a good deal?
Actually, it’s a great deal, because we’re giving everybody the money that’s generated from the carbon fee. The revenue would be distributed equally to all households in the form of a monthly carbon dividend – hence the name Carbon Fee and Dividend Act. Those who make smart choices and investments in energy use will end up keeping more of the dividend than they will pay for increased energy costs.
Just how much money are we talking about? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Let’s do some basic math.
The fee, starting at $15 for each ton of CO2 generated by a particular fuel, would increase $10 each year. In ten years, when the fee has made clean energy cheaper than coal, the assessment will be $115 a ton. Assuming that CO2 emissions will be reduced by a third at this point, four billion tons of CO2 will be assessed the fee that year, generating $460 billion. Divide that by 300 million residents and you have a per-capita payout of about $1,500 a year. A family of four would get $6,000.
Any politician who can’t build support for a $6,000 rebate is a pretty poor salesman.
We’ve put together a proposal that is simple, transparent and effective. It’s based on legislation that has been introduced from both sides of the aisle -- Rep. John Larson’s (D-CT) America’s Energy Security Trust Fund Act (H.R. 1337), and Rep. Bob Inglis’ (R-SC) Raise Wages Cut Carbon Act (H.R. 2380).
In addition to putting a predictable price on carbon and returning revenue to all households, the Carbon Fee and Dividend Act would also:
- Call for a halt to the permitting and construction of coal-fired power plants.
- Place a fee on imports from countries that don’t have similar pricing mechanisms.
- Phase out subsidies on all fossil fuels within five years.
- Ensure that clean energy becomes competitive with fossil fuels within ten years.
In short, we wrote a bill we believe is a match for the science.
Now we have to create the political will to pass this legislation. It’s an uphill task, for sure, and our volunteers are already talking to their members of Congress to solicit their support.
We need your help, too. Take a look at our bill, and if you believe, as we do, that this is the most promising solution to the climate crisis, take action. Write to us (ccl@citizensclimatelobby.org) or give us a call us (619-437-7142), and we’ll give you the training and support you need to be an effective lobbyist for the Earth and our grandchildren’s future.
At this very moment, politicians are cutting deals with each other and with corporate America that will doom any effort on climate mitigation to failure. As we’ve already seen from retreating glaciers, the Earth’s climate is not in a deal-making mood. Washington needs to hear this message. If we can enact this legislation, we won’t be tilting at windmills. We’ll be building them.
Steve Valk is communications director for Citizens Climate Lobby.TIP:
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Comments
Look, I'm a working 'climate guy' and strongly in favor of rational measures to control CO2 emissions ... and I would never sign or endorse your proposal as written. It's far too draconian, addresses emission taxes only (which IMHO is insanely bad policy in and of itself, for reasons I will get to shortly), and the rate with which you intend to impose these is much too fast, particularly so given that you are NOT dealing with any of the issues that constrain the rate at which renewable and non-CO2-producing energy sources can possibly be brought on line.
Here are a set of issues/problems you ignore:
* most economists who have studied the problem see that emission taxes on the order of $30 - $60 per MTeCO2 will be sufficient to roll-back US CO2 production to about 1/3 of current emissions. Incidentally most economists studying the coal industry agree that in that emission tax regime the coal industry just dies ... the costs of CO2 capture and sequestration seem unreasonable compared to the alternatives.
* You absolutely MUST think rationally about the issues of power availability -- and nothing in your suggested platform does this. Absent other transformations of how our society distributes, stores, and prices energy to the end customer ... your platform will have ONLY one outcome: an enormous (and very dangerous IMO) rush to build nuclear power plants on a growth ramp we do not have the infrastructure or trained manpower to sustain. Your plan would force the US to build roughly 750 to 1000 nuclear power plants in the next 10 years. This is not possible in any sane way, nor is it the goal I think you intend.
* In order for wind AND solar AND nuclear power to be able to shoulder the energy production load, we need a set of MAJOR infrastructural changes in the US, and it will be necessary to FORCE these with federal legislation because many states oppose them, and that will be a battle likely as bitter as health care. We NEED to have a national electric grid capable of moving large amounts of power long distances. We need this for solar and wind to ever be more than about 10 - 15% of the total energy production mix ... otherwise there is no way for the solar and wind energy to get from where the good sources are to the end users.... and also a long-distance distribution network allows the natural variability to substantially average out, most of the time.
* we need "demand pricing" (a bad term) to help manage load distribution and to rationalize costs
Both of the above will require strong federal legislation: many states are politically controlled by local generating interests and actively fight interstate competition. Four of the governors of North East states (including the governor of New York) sent letters to DC attempting to opt their states out of the grid improvements of HR2454 ... there is no reason or excuse for this except being in thrall to local monopolies.
* The cost and time-schedule for completely rebuilding the energy infrastructure of the United States cannot be cavalierly ignored with a simple "tax them until they can do it" ... this is asinine. It can't be done in a decade.
* You must deal with the impact of the emissions tax on the economy. It is egregious not to ... as incompetent as the tax "policies" of Shrub or Ronnie ... just in the other direction.
It is important to understand that the emissions tax (and that is what it is, we should always admit that up front) does not destroy anything of value per se. All that it does is shift WHERE the goverment takes a revenue stream. This of course directly implies that we can make such a tax "revenue neutral" by cutting other taxes, OR BY DIRECT REBATES TO THE CITIZENS. I favor a combination of both of these, for reasons I won't go into here.
* You must consider the consequences of the steep rise in the cost of energy the taxes will cause (yours particularly, which is about twice as aggressive as economists think necessary AND imposed at about three times the rate economists think is necessary or that the economy can handle) on the poor and the vulnerable. You must design some sort of program(s) to help protect them. Rural communities are particularly vulnerable here. In this regard you must think very clearly and carefully about restructuring American agriculture (which at present is far too energy dependent) ... and that is a major problem in and of itself.
Look -- our political debate is riddled with raving right-wing loonies spewing economic and scientific nonsense. It does not help the debate to spew ill-considered proposals too extreme in the other direction.