Dear Larry and all of your dedicated Climate Leaders,
I hope you and your loved ones are safe and well during these turbulent times. 2021 promises to be a hopeful year for climate progress, with your help. It would be greatly appreciated if you can share this with your fellow Community Climate Leaders.
Summary: click here and take 3 minutes to read and sign an open letter to our local Members of Congress, asking them to support Carbon Fee & Dividend Legislation in 2021.
Thank you for your continuing efforts for our climate, and your recognition of Carbon Fee and Dividend (CF&D) legislation as an important part of the solution. Citizens’ Climate Lobby promised to contact you when your help is needed moving this legislation closer to its goal. That time has come.
I’m a Windsor volunteer for CCL. Our volunteers are contacting all our local community leaders who have expressed support for CF&D, asking them to sign a letter to Representatives Thompson and Huffman, and Senators Feinstein and Padilla. The text of the one-page letter is below. You can easily sign it electronically here.
The bill CCL was supporting, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, H.R.763, ended up with 84 co-sponsors. We need to make sure the new Congress considers strong, equitable, and bipartisan CF&D a foundational element of the climate legislation we expect to be introduced this year.
Please let us know what you think. We are happy to talk with you about it, would love it if you signed, and would be thrilled if you could pass this onto any colleagues with your recommendation to sign, and cc me. Please don’t hesitate to contact Bruce Hagen with a Reply, or call/text him at 707-338-7363.
With great appreciation for your commitment to our community.
The CCL Santa Rosa Chapter volunteer team
Citizens’ Climate Lobby
Petaluma CA
brucekeyofh@gmail.com
Letter to Congress: Support CF&D in 2021 Climate Legislation
Dear Congress Members Thompson and Huffman, Senators Feinstein and Padilla:
As business and community leaders in your districts and the State of California, we applaud your work on climate. The election results offer hope for long overdue progress at the Federal level. A great variety of options awaits Congress and the Biden Administration.
Among those measures, we have endorsed carbon pricing — in particular, carbon fee and dividend (CF&D). It’s by no means the final word on climate. But properly designed, with a price that starts low and increases steeply, and with fee revenues returned to households, CF&D is among the most effective and economically progressive options. It works without regulations vulnerable to court or executive branch delays. Its price tag is tiny, leaving Federal budget money for other necessary climate-related initiatives, including job transition and environmental justice.
Support for carbon pricing continues to grow. One version, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2019 (H.R.763), gained 84 co-sponsors, including Congressional Black Caucus Chair Karen Bass. Paul Hawken says effective carbon pricing will accelerate every climate solution described in Drawdown. President Biden’s new Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry is a carbon pricing supporter, as is Janet Yellen, the new Treasury Secretary.
The Business Roundtable, a major trade association of CEOs of companies with collectively over $7 trillion in revenues announced its endorsement of a “market-based mechanism” as part of the plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions with pricing carbon as an essential step in that plan. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission now calls for “sweeping climate change risk regulation”, finding that “financial markets will only be able to channel resources efficiently to activities that reduce greenhouse gas emissions if an economy-wide price on carbon is in place.”
The climate crisis is too big to be solved by one political party working alone. Support among conservatives is growing, especially among younger voters. We think CF&D can be the nucleus for a bipartisan climate majority in the 117th Congress, and the glue that holds it together for the necessary long haul.
Thank you for your enduring service to our community, our country, and our future.
Electronically signed by the following community climate leaders. Affiliations are for identification purposes only:
Name Affiliation
REFERENCE LINKS
- HR763 Site w/ Cosponsors: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/763
- Paul Hawken video: https://youtu.be/vQDEmneiMqc?t=1898
- Kerry OpEd: https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/526654-how-to-better-tackle-climate-change
- Yellen story: https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-climate-tax/u-s-could-adopt-carbon-tax-under-a-biden-presidency-ex-fed-chair-yellen-idUSL1N2GY2EI
- Business Roundtable home: https://www.businessroundtable.org/
- Roundtable endorsement story: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-ceo-group-says-it-supports-carbon-pricing-to-fight-climate-change-2020-9
- CFTC story: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/cftc-panel-calls-for-sweeping-climate-change-risk-regulation
- Conservative support: https://www.clcouncil.org/media/Luntz-Carbon-Dividends-Polling-May-20-2019-FINAL.pdf
Most sincerely,