Letter to the Editor: Small-Government Solution to Global Warming

It’s always great to hear about communities and states working to fight climate change and promote clean energy, but the worldwide scientific community has made it clear that local/state/regional efforts will be far too little far too late to prevent “catastrophic” climate change (National Academy of Sciences/IPCC). We’ll need national legislation with a global impact and we’ll need it soon.  

Fortunately, we have a proven solution to global warming that won’t cost anything and will have enormous economic benefits. It’s a carbon pollution tax with all the tax money given to every taxpayer in a monthly checks, that will increase our GDP $75-80 billion annually and create millions of good jobs. Everybody gets the same amount of money and the amount goes up every year as the carbon tax increases. Buy cheaper clean energy and make more every year as solar/wind prices continue to plummet as they scale up (citizensclimatelobby.org).

A carbon tax that asks people to pay more in energy bills has always been a political non-starter, but we can give people more money every year, rewarding them for buying clean energy. That’s a game changer. British Columbia’s done it for a decade: They have lower energy bills and lower taxes and the fastest-growing economy in Canada (The Economist).

It’s called Carbon Fee and Dividend because fossil fuel corporations pay the fee and we, the taxpayers, get the monthly carbon “dividend” checks. It’s a small-government solution conservatives can support. Enacted by Congress, it will have a global “domino” effect, using market forces rather than toothless international agreements to make other nations cut their greenhouse gas emissions as much and as fast as we do.

Go to the volunteer Citizens Climate Lobby website to see how it works.   

Pete Kuntz

Northglenn, Colo.