Narrated by Lushika Preethrajh
It’s easy to blame fossil fuel companies for climate change, since they are the purveyors of the primary driver of global warming, and have deliberately misled the public about both the science of — and the solutions to — climate change.
But progressives have made it far too easy for them to block effective action on climate change. Many progressives have framed climate change as an economic and environmental justice problem that can only be solved if social justice is achieved.
Climate change is indeed a matter of justice because the emitters of greenhouse gases are not paying for the impacts in proportion to their emissions, if at all. It is those people directly impacted by climate change and the pollutants driving it, as well as those paying for higher insurance premiums and higher taxes that address the impacts, who are suffering. In short, the impacts of climate change are socialized, while the causes are privatized.
Sadly, by arguing that climate change cannot be prevented without addressing economic and environmental injustice, progressives have made climate change much more difficult to solve. We have missed an opportunity to mitigate climate change and injustice at the same time. The call from progressives to end capitalism and send remediation to people of color and those in a low income bracket has turned off the middle class as well as the wealthy. Their argument might work well in states dominated by progressives (such as Washington), but it hasn’t worked well at the national scale, which is where it’s most needed. Only national climate policies can deal with international trade, which is where carbon leakage is most important.
Carbon fees for social justice
How can climate change and injustice be solved at the same time? If a price was applied to the carbon content of fossil fuel, so that consumers are actually paying for climate impacts in proportion to their emissions, and if the revenue from the carbon fee was distributed uniformly to everyone as a monthly carbon cashback, carbon emissions would quickly decline, and economic inequality would also decline. When emissions of toxic pollutants and floods decline, both of which disproportionally affect lower-income households, environmental injustice is reduced substantially. Economic inequality also declines because those with lower incomes emit less, and therefore pay less in carbon fees than wealthy people, while receiving the same carbon revenue as everyone else. 99% of families in the lowest quintile of income would either get more in carbon dividends than they’re paying in carbon cashback or break even.
So, a revenue-neutral carbon fee and cashback policy achieves many of the goals of economic and environmental justice, as well as being very effective in driving down the most important emissions that cause climate change.
About messaging
When talking to progressives, I usually ask them about their environmental justice concerns, and I often hear about how most of the impacts fall on those with the lowest incomes and most of the emissions are by those with the highest. I then explain how a national carbon fee and cashback policy addresses those concerns.
When talking to conservatives, I ask about their concerns about climate policies and frequently hear complaints about climate change being used as a political weapon for transferring wealth to people with lower incomes. I agree, and explain how a revenue-neutral carbon fee and cashback policy doesn’t refer to income at all, and rewards all people for reducing their carbon emissions.
Getting support across the political spectrum is key to getting a climate policy passed by Congress and sustained over multiple generations.
Showing how carbon fees and cashback address all of these concerns turns climate change into a political winner, not a weapon.
Climate scientist Steve Ghan leads the Tri-Cities Chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby.
