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Charles March of Falmouth is a member of Citizens’ Climate Lobby.
Mainers don’t need the National Weather Service to inform them of the increasingly fierce winds and rising tidal waters that have whacked us this fall and winter. The effects of a warming planet, caused by ongoing greenhouse gas pollution, are coming faster than we thought. All of us are paying the price with our health and in our pocket books.
Gov. Janet Mills and the White House can be applauded for quickly responding to damaged homes and infrastructure with recovery costs and resiliency efforts for protection from future severe weather events. But remember, we are paying the price for these government funds from our taxes. Fossil fuel companies are not paying for it.
Why don’t we go on the offensive to lower the emissions causing pollution and severe climate change in the first place? Government will respond if we show our strength.
Polls show that a majority of voters want more government action to tackle this climate crisis. A proper plan was framed years ago by leading Republicans, some even from Texas. It puts a piece of responsibility for global warming on the companies extracting carbon out of the ground and selling it as fuels.
The plan is to put an annually increasing fee on carbon products at the source as they are extracted (i.e., oil, coal, natural gas). This money then goes into a trust fund, not to the government in taxes. The fund then provides a regular dividend check to every American monthly to offset the expected rise in prices for carbon-intensive products.
If passed into law, not only would the dividend checks especially assist low-and middle-income families, but sending this fee through the entire economy would push businesses and citizens to transition faster to renewable, clean energy. Carbon pricing already exists in some other industrialized countries around the world. And this program — carbon fee and dividend — has been in effect in Canada for several years. We are lagging by not using this tool to tackle fossil fuel emissions.
The U.S. has suffered 376 weather and climate disasters since 1980 where the overall damage costs were $1 billion or more. The total cost of the 376 events exceeds $2.6 trillion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Now,there’s another looming cost if we do not have a carbon pricing plan. Carbon pricing laws in Europe, and elsewhere are beginning to impose tariffs on foreign imports of carbon-intensive products into their countries if the imports come from countries without a carbon pricing program. These tariffs would likely impose significant costs on our American imports hurting our economy again.
A bill to implement this common sense plan is now waiting in Congress for approval, and we all can do our bit to persuade Reps. Jared Golden and Chellie Pingree and Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King to back it. H.R. 5744, The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2023, simply put, puts a fee on every ton of carbon extracted at the source, and this fee goes into a trust fund that then provides a regular dividend check to every American.
You can learn more and get engaged in this important work for our healthy future easily. Many of us are volunteering through a nonprofit organization that draws volunteers from both Republican and Democrat families. That outfit, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, is at www.citizensclimatelobby.org. You will likely be inspired!
