PBS News Hour Special Segment of the Proposed Washington State Carbon Tax

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

Pricing carbon-based products will help reduce emissions

Guest Commentary in the Cheney Free Press
May 15, 2014 | Vol. 118 -- No. 4
Richard Badalamente

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee recently signed an executive order creating a task force to design a “carbon emission limits and market mechanisms program” that establishes a cap on emissions, and includes “measures to help offset any cost impacts to consumers and workers, protect low-income households and assist energy intensive, trade-exposed businesses in their transition from carbon-based fuels.” Inslee’s “emissions limits and markets” program is, like a rose by any other name, a cap and trade program.

The Western Climate Initiative, of which Washington is a member, has established a regional target for reducing heat-trapping emissions of 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. WCI’s main focus is developing a regional cap-and-trade program, so Inslee’s executive order is congruent with this goal and focus. Inslee is doing all he can at the state level. Unfortunately, cap and trade won’t do enough to reduce emissions. It’s a little like dusting your house with a feather duster. It just moves the dust from one place to another.

The best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to price carbon-based products, like coal, such that the price reflects the damage those products cause to the environment and, in turn, our quality of life (the so-called "Social Cost of Carbon"). To do this we must put a surcharge, or fee on carbon to be assessed at its source. This fee must be imposed at the national level in order to avoid a patchwork of policies that confuses markets and pits one state against another.

The fee on carbon would start low and increase annually in a predictable manner until emissions goals were reached. Now, there’s no getting around semantics on this —conservatives will call the fee a “tax” and will oppose it on principle, shouting slogans about, “tax and spend liberals!” But here’s the kicker; 100 percent of revenues collected from the carbon fee world be returned to households as a monthly dividend. This is what’s termed a “revenue-neutral carbon tax,” or in economic terms, a Pigouvian Tax, and it is considered by most economists to be the most effective way of reducing emissions, while minimizing the impact on the economy.

Under cap and trade, bankers and market traders get rich, and administrators go nuts. A carbon fee and dividend system is far more effective in reducing emissions, and it is immensely simpler to administer. And because the fee (and in turn, the price of fossil fuel) goes up predictably over time, it sends a clear price signal to industry. That predictability allows intelligent investments in low/no emissions technologies. Carbon fee and dividend proponents, such as the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, also propose placing a border adjustment levy on all imports from countries that do not price carbon similarly, leveling the playing field for U.S. companies.

For consumers, the rising cost of fossil fuels increases the demand for low/no emissions products, making them even less expensive as they reach mass production. Research and development of emissions mitigation technologies, and production of clean energy alternatives also creates jobs, and drives our nation’s economy into a clean energy future — a future in which we have stabilized our climate and ensured a livable planet for our children, and their children after them.

Addressing the Impacts of Climate Change is a Risk Management Problem

The following video of the late Stephen Schneider speaking before the Commonwealth Club is from Schneider's web site, Understanding and Solving the Climate Change Problem, Stanford University.

Schneider talks about the intersection of science and politics, and the difficulty of tackling a complex scientific subject like climate change in the charged atmosphere of today’s ideologically divided nation. He discusses such difficult questions as how uncertainty comes with the territory, what risks the changing climate poses to the global economy, and ways to approach solving the problem, especially in light of the well-funded disinformation campaign being waged by special interests.

Schneider says that policymakers should fund more research to invent our way to a cleaner future rather than betting so much on a cap-and-trade or carbon tax regime for carbon pollution. He believes the price of carbon should ultimately reflect the impact of spewing millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, but recommends a realistic sequence for enacting climate policy. Schneider stresses that policy formulation is a risk management problem in which value judgements play a key role. As always, Schneider’s talk is alive with clarity and humor.