EPA's Emissions Target for Washington is Right On Target

Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-5) wrote in her July 22 op-ed for the Seattle Times that the EPA’s 72% target emissions reduction for Washington is “counterintuitive.” It may appear so, but EPA’s methodology for determining each state’s reduction is based on a state’s ability to cut their emissions. Washington has a head start on other states. Furthermore, Washington’s only coal-fired power plant, which accounts for 70% of electric power emissions, will phase out by 2025, making it a cinch to meet EPA’s target.

We do have alternatives to EPA’s regulations. Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s legislative’s proposal would place a nation-wide fee on carbon and return all revenues to households as a monthly dividend. This would level the playing field for low-carbon energy, including nuclear, and the monthly dividend would offset increased costs to consumers. A recent study by an independent economics modeling organization showed that such an approach would reduce emissions by 33% by 2025, and 52% by 2035, and add between 2 and 3 million jobs.

As a parent and grandparent, I share Representative McMorris Rodgers’ concern that we leave a “stronger America for our children and grandchildren,” and I urge her to work with her colleagues to reign in emissions by passing carbon fee and dividend legislation.

Volunteers Advocate for Cutting Greenhouse Gases and Creating Jobs

by Jim Russell

Citizen lobbyists from around the U.S. take market-based solution for global warming to Capitol Hill during a conference held June 22-24 in Washington D.C. About 600 volunteers attended including seven from Eastern Washington
(Photo by Erica Flock/Citizen’s Climate Lobby website)

Tired of the swarming debates about taxes, regulations and job losses to reverse global warming? Would you believe there is a Fee and Dividend proposal that reduces carbon emissions without regulations and sends you a dividend check to pay for increased energy costs and increases jobs?  Then you may be interested in the bipartisan individuals in Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL), who fervently believe they are making progress in Congress.

The fervor of the CCL has risen at the same time powerful Republicans voices have risen in the report, Risky Business Project. It urges businesses reduce greenhouse gases that pose serious economic risks to agricultural yields, labor productivity, human health, energy systems, insurance, coastal properties, wildfires and infrastructure.

“When people like former Treasury Secretaries Hank Paulson and George Shultz, both Republicans, start talking about the extreme risk of taking no action on global warming, it increases the pressure on Congress to come up with solutions,” said Mark Reynolds, CCL executive director.

CCL’s plan requires energy companies pay a fee on carbon emissions at the source, 100 percent of which is redistributed to households by the federal government. Energy producers reduce carbon emissions by purchasing less-expensive energy systems from industries that increase jobs to respond to the demand.

The study estimates a carbon fee that increased every year for 20
 years would cut greenhouse gas emissions in half, add 2.8 million jobs to the economy and save lives lost to pulmonary disease.

CCL is a nonprofit, honest-to-goodness grassroots group of informed volunteer advocates. It trains volunteers who spend their own money to advocate in Congress and through the media.

Seven people from Eastern Washington joined 600 others to attend a CCL conference June 22-24 in Washington D.C. They learned more about the Fee and Dividend system and how to present the information to Sen. Maria Cantwell and Sen. Patty Murray and to the staff in Doc Hastings’ and Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ offices.

Two of the members responded to my emails asking why they paid to participate: Steve Ghan and Jim Amonette from the Tri-Cities.

Ghan is a climate scientist who was co-author of three Nobel Peace Prize reports on climate change and is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres. “I started speaking to the public about climate change three years ago when I saw a deliberate misinformation campaign has confused the public into thinking the issue has not been settled in the scientific community.” He joined the CCL as a private citizen because it is bipartisan and because the Fee and Dividend plan is attractive to all interests.

“The interest was most obvious when every one of the five offices I visited wanted to see the study showing that the CCL solution stimulates the economy. It does seem to be a game changer, and gives me considerable hope that a political solution can be negotiated.”

Hope for congressional action on global warming? That’s unusual. Amonette also is hopeful. He’s a soil chemist who has focused on environmental issues such as reducing the organic carbon released into the atmosphere by tilling the soil. When he realized governments weren’t acting on climate science, he researched how to get involved. CCL “was precisely what I was looking for.”

“The Fee and Dividend approach seemed a much better route than other approaches such as regulation, subsidies and cap-and-trade, none of which do anything to help the average citizen deal with the necessary rise in the cost of energy that comes from a switch from fossil fuels, and all of which are subject to significant political or legal maneuvering that could prevent us from achieving the primary goal. I was also attracted by the grassroots nature of the organization coupled with a very high ethical standard,” Amonette said.

His most memorable experience was hearing former U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC). “Here was a rock-ribbed Christian conservative politician who fervently believes that something needs to be done about the climate (and entirely consistent with conservative principles) and lost re-election because of his courageous stand.

Despite that, “I saw progress being made on Capitol Hill towards a nonpartisan common-sense solution to global warming.”

Information on CCL and the Fee and Dividend are at http://citizensclimatelobby.org/about-us/.

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Posted by Empire Press on Jul 16, 2014 in All News, Communities, Community News, Douglas County, Voices

CLIMATE CHANGE SOLUTION: An open letter to members of congress

Devastation: Super Storm Sandy

Dear Congressman / Senator;

Climate change is a real and growing threat. Human-caused global warming has already caused billions of dollars of damage and untold suffering across the globe, including here in the United States. The longer we wait to act, the more expensive it will be to mitigate the impacts of what could become a climate catastrophe.

At over 400 ppm we have now reached atmospheric concentrations of CO2 never before seen in recorded human history. We need to be no higher than 350 pmm of CO2, and yet we continue to add well over 30 billion tons annually. We are already seeing the effects; melting ice sheets, sea level rise, shrinking ice pack, drought, more intense wildfires, ocean acidification, and unusual and troubling weather events around the world.

But we can tackle this problem. It will require a well thought-out, comprehensive, aggressively executed plan of action. One that starts with a revenue-neutral carbon fee -- a free market approach that levels the playing field for clean energy technologies; technologies that can create hundreds of thousands of jobs and vault the American economy into the 22nd Century.

This is not wishful thinking. A study just released by Regional Economic Models, Inc. and Synergy Energy Economics, Inc., showed that a modest but steadily increasing carbon fee and dividend not only reduces emissions by 33% by 2025, but adds up to 3 million jobs, and boosts the U.S. economy by up to $90 billion in annual GDP. There are other benefits, too numerous to detail here. The study is available from Steve Valk at the Citizens Climate Lobby.

In conclusion, I’d like to thank you for your service to our state and the nation. As you consider your priorities for the remainder of this legislative session, I hope you will add to what I’m sure is a long list, tackling the advancing threat of climate change, and the path forward that a revenue-neutral carbon tax -- a carbon fee and dividend -- provides.

Sincerely,

/s/

Richard Badalamente