|
Recent Atlantic sea surface temperatures (NOAA)
Our sympathies to the millions impacted by Hurricane Helene, massively fueled by bathtub-warm Gulf waters. Every additional degree of warming causes a 7% increase in atmospheric moisture, leading to the numerous recent Biblical deluges, for which no one can prepare.
Unless and until global pricing of fossil fuels successfully curbs demand -- and thus emissions -- these and other climate tragedies will only get worse. Everywhere.
| |
|
Take a break:
There will be no Marin/Sonoma chapter meeting in October. Please join us post-election (whether or not we know the outcome by then) on Saturday, November 9 to discuss where we go from there.
But do join the National call at 10 AM
October's meeting will be with senior reporter for Bloomberg News Akshat Rathi, PhD (chemical engineering), author of Climate Capitalism. Through stories that bring people, policy and technology together, he reveals how the green economy is not only possible, but profitable. This inspiring blend of business, science, and history provides the framework for ensuring that future generations can live in prosperity and that the wheels of progress don’t falter.
Tune in at 10 AM PT
|
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse,
Chair, Senate Budget Committee,
on Carbon Pricing :
"THERE’S NO OTHER PATH TO CLIMATE SAFETY"
“If we want a path to climate safety, it’s going to require us to do what is economically and morally right, which is to price carbon pollution.”
| |
"The United States currently does not have a federal carbon pricing program, but that may change due to a confluence of factors, including accelerating climate impacts, U.S. net zero targets, and motivation to address the federal deficit. Global economic pressures play a role, too, as an increasing number of countries tax imported goods based on the amount of pollution that’s required to make them. The European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)—a tariff that will predominantly impact imported goods from the cement, electricity, fertilizer, some metals, and hydrogen sectors from countries outside the EU—will take effect in 2026."
Read more here.
|  | |
How to Accelerate Action Across America
4.1 Implement a fair carbon price in conjunction with other policies to create strong demand for low-emission technologies.
"Every ton of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere causes damage for which no one is currently held responsible...
The country should aspire to align the price set on carbon emissions with the full costs that carbon pollution puts on the economy and society. Those costs, known as the social cost of carbon, include the vast health care costs, estimated at $820 billion annually, from pollutants created when fossil fuels are burned...$100 per ton of CO2 emitted is a price that may be politically feasible and sends a clear signal about the need to act.
Achieving a carbon price in the United States has been politically challenging, as demonstrated by the failure of the 2009 Waxman-Markey Bill to initiate a cap-and-trade system. Many of the concerns surrounding the Waxman-Markey Bill are still highly relevant to current pricing efforts, including those related to fairness, international relationships, target-setting, and revenue spending...
Carbon pricing is a powerful tool to motivate decarbonization, but it will not be sufficient on its own. Particular attention is needed to address the potential disproportionate economic impact on lower-income American neighborhoods, such as through the many proposals that have focused on refunding some or all of the revenues directly to the public.107 This “fee and dividend” approach could be used to offset other taxes in ways that could improve the nation’s public finances and shift the taxation burden. This model has broad support, though no concrete proposal exists.108 Through interviews, the Commission found that these ideas also commanded significant support from businesses.109 Such an approach has the advantage of making the level of effort to cut emissions highly transparent, which could assist with the imposition of corrective tariffs on goods traded in international markets."
Here's the full report. It's thoughtful, readable and comprehensive.
| |
New Study Confirms That Real-World Carbon Pricing Works
WSJ: "An evaluation of more than 1,500 climate policies in 41 countries found that only 63 actually worked to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."
"Subsidies and regulations—policy types often favored by governments—rarely worked to reduce emissions, the study found, unless they were combined with price-based strategies aimed at changing consumer and corporate behavior."
What has worked to fight climate change? Policies where someone pays for polluting. The key ingredient if you want to reduce emissions is to have pricing in the policy mix. (Is anyone really surprised?)
Science (Original paper)
NYT
WSJ
| |
|
The Tipping Points of Climate Change — and Where We Stand | Johan Rockström | TED
Should your climate anxiety level need to be further jolted into the stratosphere, tolerate 18 minutes with this world renowned scientist, who explains why earth scientists are "getting nervous" to say the least.
He demonstrates that climate tipping points are already here, that the changes are accelerating, buffering systems are weakening, we are way behind, and we are about to lose control....
But there is still hope that if we act really fast we might be able to stabilize Earth's climate in a habitable zone, a great reason to finally harness the enormous power of the global energy economy using CCL's proposed carbon fee, dividend and border carbon adjustment policy to forcibly apply the brakes on fossil fuel demand -- and thus supply and emissions -- before it's too late. It's not the only thing we must do, but it's essential. Focus on demand reduction by raising the price in a way people will tolerate (by governments not keeping the revenue) -- rather than supply, which may be inexhaustible if we dig deep enough.
Brace yourself.
| |
Project 2025 “Training Videos” Leaked
You've got to see this to believe it.
(She may look harmless, but...)
| |
Forewarned:
How Project 2025 Will Gut Climate Regs
| |
Here’s where Kamala Harris stands on climate and energy:
CNN
NYT
VOX
| |
BUT WAIT...what's wrong with this picture? | |
Kamala Harris Turns Biden's $493 Billion Climate Legacy Into a Footnote
Wind turbines nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower are rising off the Massachusetts coast. A $2 billion electric truck factory is taking shape in South Carolina. And in Colorado, a three-square-mile field of ink-black solar panels is powering a steel mill.
"The US is mobilizing so much investment into clean energy that it now tops even the peak of America’s fracking revolution in the 2010s. The wave of spending triggered by Joe Biden’s signature climate law is set to be the president’s biggest and most-enduring domestic achievement — yet it barely registers in Kamala Harris’ campaign.
From stump speeches to the Democratic convention and her debate with Donald Trump, Harris has largely shied away from touting the success of Biden’s green initiatives, despite the staggering size of the private investments the policies have sparked.
Her motives are clear. Fighting climate change may win voters in her home state of California. But the topic is far more divisive in natural-gas rich Pennsylvania and other states pivotal to the election. The implications go well beyond the campaign.
Harris’ reluctance to make green initiatives a central platform underscores how fighting climate change still fails to resonate with many US voters, even when those efforts stimulate the economy and create thousands of jobs. That will make it difficult to marshal broad support needed from US lawmakers to take another legislative leap forward. Ultimately, the lack of political will risks leaving the nation, the world’s second-biggest source of carbon dioxide emissions, dangerously short of its net-zero goals."
Read on!
| |
|
Here's another path to activism in this election cycle: get involved with the nonpartisan EVP, whose mission is to get environmental voters to actually vote. "We identify inactive environmentalists and transform them into consistent voters to build the power of the environmental movement."
Their leader, Nathanial Stinnett addressed CCL's D.C. conference on June 9. Watch his inspiring talk here.
Then watch how CCL is engaging in the upcoming elections, and how to make climate an electoral issue.
The Election Engagement Action Team is in full swing. You can help get out the climate vote!
| |
|
Do Not Miss This Series!
If you've already seen it, watch it again. You'll then understand how we got into this mess -- Denial, Doubt and Delay -- and what it will take to get us out: Massive popular political pressure supporting robust solutions that this industry and their agents will inevitably oppose.
| |
|
You're invited, but...
This is how one behaves inside The Capitol:
Make an appointment. Business attire recommended. Bring nothing that even looks like a weapon.
Long live Democracy.
| |
|
Prepared by Peter G. Joseph, M.D.
Peter.Joseph@cclvolunteer.org
Apologies for cross postings.
If you know someone who would like to be added to this distribution list, please suggest they join CCL.
| | | | |
|
Recent Atlantic sea surface temperatures (NOAA)
Our sympathies to the millions impacted by Hurricane Helene, massively fueled by bathtub-warm Gulf waters. Every additional degree of warming causes a 7% increase in atmospheric moisture, leading to the numerous recent Biblical deluges, for which no one can prepare.
Unless and until global pricing of fossil fuels successfully curbs demand -- and thus emissions -- these and other climate tragedies will only get worse. Everywhere.
| |
|
Take a break:
There will be no Marin/Sonoma chapter meeting in October. Please join us post-election (whether or not we know the outcome by then) on Saturday, November 9 to discuss where we go from there.
But do join the National call at 10 AM
October's meeting will be with senior reporter for Bloomberg News Akshat Rathi, PhD (chemical engineering), author of Climate Capitalism. Through stories that bring people, policy and technology together, he reveals how the green economy is not only possible, but profitable. This inspiring blend of business, science, and history provides the framework for ensuring that future generations can live in prosperity and that the wheels of progress don’t falter.
Tune in at 10 AM PT
|
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse,
Chair, Senate Budget Committee,
on Carbon Pricing :
"THERE’S NO OTHER PATH TO CLIMATE SAFETY"
“If we want a path to climate safety, it’s going to require us to do what is economically and morally right, which is to price carbon pollution.”
| |
"The United States currently does not have a federal carbon pricing program, but that may change due to a confluence of factors, including accelerating climate impacts, U.S. net zero targets, and motivation to address the federal deficit. Global economic pressures play a role, too, as an increasing number of countries tax imported goods based on the amount of pollution that’s required to make them. The European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)—a tariff that will predominantly impact imported goods from the cement, electricity, fertilizer, some metals, and hydrogen sectors from countries outside the EU—will take effect in 2026."
Read more here.
| | | |
How to Accelerate Action Across America
4.1 Implement a fair carbon price in conjunction with other policies to create strong demand for low-emission technologies.
"Every ton of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere causes damage for which no one is currently held responsible...
The country should aspire to align the price set on carbon emissions with the full costs that carbon pollution puts on the economy and society. Those costs, known as the social cost of carbon, include the vast health care costs, estimated at $820 billion annually, from pollutants created when fossil fuels are burned...$100 per ton of CO2 emitted is a price that may be politically feasible and sends a clear signal about the need to act.
Achieving a carbon price in the United States has been politically challenging, as demonstrated by the failure of the 2009 Waxman-Markey Bill to initiate a cap-and-trade system. Many of the concerns surrounding the Waxman-Markey Bill are still highly relevant to current pricing efforts, including those related to fairness, international relationships, target-setting, and revenue spending...
Carbon pricing is a powerful tool to motivate decarbonization, but it will not be sufficient on its own. Particular attention is needed to address the potential disproportionate economic impact on lower-income American neighborhoods, such as through the many proposals that have focused on refunding some or all of the revenues directly to the public.107 This “fee and dividend” approach could be used to offset other taxes in ways that could improve the nation’s public finances and shift the taxation burden. This model has broad support, though no concrete proposal exists.108 Through interviews, the Commission found that these ideas also commanded significant support from businesses.109 Such an approach has the advantage of making the level of effort to cut emissions highly transparent, which could assist with the imposition of corrective tariffs on goods traded in international markets."
Here's the full report. It's thoughtful, readable and comprehensive.
| |
New Study Confirms That Real-World Carbon Pricing Works
WSJ: "An evaluation of more than 1,500 climate policies in 41 countries found that only 63 actually worked to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."
"Subsidies and regulations—policy types often favored by governments—rarely worked to reduce emissions, the study found, unless they were combined with price-based strategies aimed at changing consumer and corporate behavior."
What has worked to fight climate change? Policies where someone pays for polluting. The key ingredient if you want to reduce emissions is to have pricing in the policy mix. (Is anyone really surprised?)
Science (Original paper)
NYT
WSJ
| |
|
The Tipping Points of Climate Change — and Where We Stand | Johan Rockström | TED
Should your climate anxiety level need to be further jolted into the stratosphere, tolerate 18 minutes with this world renowned scientist, who explains why earth scientists are "getting nervous" to say the least.
He demonstrates that climate tipping points are already here, that the changes are accelerating, buffering systems are weakening, we are way behind, and we are about to lose control....
But there is still hope that if we act really fast we might be able to stabilize Earth's climate in a habitable zone, a great reason to finally harness the enormous power of the global energy economy with CCL's proposed carbon fee, dividend and border adjustment policy to forcibly apply the brakes on fossil fuel demand -- and thus emissions -- before it's too late. It's not the only thing we must do, but it's essential.
Brace yourself.
| |
Project 2025 “Training Videos” Leaked
You've got to see this to believe it.
(She may look harmless, but...)
| |
Forewarned:
How Project 2025 Will Gut Climate Regs
| |
Here’s where Kamala Harris stands on climate and energy:
CNN
NYT
VOX
| |
BUT wait...what's wrong with this picture? | |
Kamala Harris Turns Biden's $493 Billion Climate Legacy Into a Footnote
Wind turbines nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower are rising off the Massachusetts coast. A $2 billion electric truck factory is taking shape in South Carolina. And in Colorado, a three-square-mile field of ink-black solar panels is powering a steel mill.
"The US is mobilizing so much investment into clean energy that it now tops even the peak of America’s fracking revolution in the 2010s. The wave of spending triggered by Joe Biden’s signature climate law is set to be the president’s biggest and most-enduring domestic achievement — yet it barely registers in Kamala Harris’ campaign.
From stump speeches to the Democratic convention and her debate with Donald Trump, Harris has largely shied away from touting the success of Biden’s green initiatives, despite the staggering size of the private investments the policies have sparked.
Her motives are clear. Fighting climate change may win voters in her home state of California. But the topic is far more divisive in natural-gas rich Pennsylvania and other states pivotal to the election. The implications go well beyond the campaign.
Harris’ reluctance to make green initiatives a central platform underscores how fighting climate change still fails to resonate with many US voters, even when those efforts stimulate the economy and create thousands of jobs. That will make it difficult to marshal broad support needed from US lawmakers to take another legislative leap forward. Ultimately, the lack of political will risks leaving the nation, the world’s second-biggest source of carbon dioxide emissions, dangerously short of its net-zero goals."
Read on!
| |
|
Here's another path to activism in this election cycle: get involved with the nonpartisan EVP, whose mission is to get environmental voters to actually vote. "We identify inactive environmentalists and transform them into consistent voters to build the power of the environmental movement."
Their leader, Nathanial Stinnett addressed CCL's D.C. conference on June 9. Watch his inspiring talk here.
Then watch how CCL is engaging in the upcoming elections, and how to make climate an electoral issue.
The Election Engagement Action Team is in full swing. You can help get out the climate vote!
| |
|
Do Not Miss This Series!
If you've already seen it, watch it again. You'll then understand how we got into this mess -- Denial, Doubt and Delay -- and what it will take to get us out: Massive popular political pressure supporting robust solutions that this industry and their agents will inevitably oppose.
| |
|
You're invited, but...
This is how one behaves inside The Capitol:
Make an appointment. Business attire recommended. Bring nothing that even looks like a weapon.
Long live Democracy.
| |
|
Prepared by Peter G. Joseph, M.D.
Peter.Joseph@cclvolunteer.org
Apologies for cross postings.
If you know someone who would like to be added to this distribution list, please suggest they join CCL.
| | | | |
