MEDIA PACKET, SEPTEMBER 2017

Mother Nature is telling us:

It’s time to price carbon

If we continue to pour heat-trapping emissions into our atmosphere, at some point we will exhaust our ability to recover from these climate-related disasters. Our best hope to reduce future risk is a fee on carbon with revenue returned to households.

In the waning weeks of summer, our nation has suffered devastating blows from a series of disasters made worse by climate change – Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, and a wildfire season that has set much of the West ablaze.

The damage from these disasters, in both human and economic terms, is staggering, and it raises an important question: How many of these climate-related catastrophes must we endure before we take meaningful steps to reduce the emissions of heat-trapping gases that are warming our air and oceans?

As the frequency and severity of these disasters increases, a point will come in the future when calamities fueled by higher temperatures outpace our capacity to recover. Our resources, grit and determination are not inexhaustible. Mother Nature will not just humble us; she will crush us.

Congress, which has been frustratingly missing in action on climate change, must respond not only to the aftermath of these catastrophes, but also to the source of the problem by pricing carbon.

Disasters and climate change

This summer has provided a glimpse of what lies ahead:

Hurricane Harvey wreaked havoc of biblical proportion in Southeast Texas at the end of August. The storm dumped 50 inches of rain in some areas, an event meteorologists referred to as a 1,000-year flood, meaning that in any given year, a flood of this magnitude has a one in 1,000 chance of occurring. Less than two weeks later, Hurricane Irma became the strongest storm recorded in the Atlantic outside the Carribean and Gulf of Mexico with sustained winds of 185 miles per hour. After destroying several islands in the Caribbean, Irma made landfall in Key West and roared up the west coast of Florida leaving a trail of destruction from wind, rain and storm surges.

This is the first time two Category 4 Hurricanes have struck the U.S. mainland in the same season. AccuWeather President Joel Myers said the combined cost of Harvey and Irma might be $290 billion, which represents 1.5 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, a sizeable hit for the economy.

What is the role that climate change played in making these storms so destructive?

Scientists are not saying these storms were “caused” by climate change. Hurricanes were around long before humans began burning fossil fuels. What scientists can tell us, however, is that global warming is intensifying these storms and creating conditions that make them more destructive for several reasons:

  • Warmer air holds more moisture and eventually discharges that moisture as rain.
  • Heat is energy, and higher ocean temperatures provide the fuel for stronger hurricanes.
  • As heat expands ocean water and glaciers melt, sea levels rise, making storm surges more destructive.

Lest we think this extreme weather is a naturally-occurring phenomenon, here’s a sobering fact: There have been three 500-year (or worse) floods in the Houston area in the past three years. At this pace, Houston will not have recovered from the current catastrophe before the next 500-year flood hits.

While climate-strengthened storms batter Gulf Coast states, wildfires out West have charred millions of acres. Nationwide, more than 8 million acres have burned in a year that should have experienced a mild fire season because of an unusually wet winter and spring. As Robinson Meyer reported in The Atlantic:

“Last winter, a weak La Niña bloomed across the Pacific. It sent flume after flume of rain to North America and irrigated half the continent. Water penetrated deep into the soil of Western forests, and mammoth snowdrifts stacked up across the Sierra Nevadas. California’s drought ended in the washout…

“So what happened? How did a wet Western winter lead to a sky-choking summer?

“The answer lies in the summer’s record-breaking heat, say wildfire experts. Days of near-100-degree-Fahrenheit temperatures cooked the Mountain West in early July, and a scorching heat wave lingered over the Pacific Northwest in early August.

“ ‘This will become an important year for [anecdotes about] the importance of temperature. Despite the fact that these forests were really soaked down this winter and spring, these heat waves have dried things out enough to promote really large fires,’ says Park Williams, a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.”

Last year, a study in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that climate change has doubled the amount of land affected by wildfires over the last 30 years. Park Williams, the study’s coauthor, said “Climate is really running the show in terms of what burns. We should be getting ready for bigger fire years than those familiar to previous generations.”

The U.S. budget for fighting forest fires this year is $1.89 billion, of which $1.75 billion has already been spent.

Civilization has dealt with hurricanes, floods and wildfires for millennia. What is different now is that human activity -- the burning of fossil fuels -- is making these disasters worse. This summer’s catastrophes provided a preview of a future where the impact of climate change exceeds our ability to cope with the consequences. Unless the U.S. and other nations accelerate efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, future generations will live with an inhospitable world.

An economically viable way to cut carbon

With the cost of this year’s disasters reaching into the hundreds of billions of dollars, the question isn’t whether we can afford to take the steps necessary to curtail climate change. Rather, the question is: Can we afford not to?

Even so, the question about the cost of mitigation through mechanisms like carbon pricing becomes irrelevant with the right policy. We do not have to choose between economic prosperity and preserving a livable climate. We can have both by placing a steadily-rising fee on the greenhouse gas content of fossil fuels and then returning the revenue from that fee to all households in equal shares.

Known as Carbon Fee and Dividend, the policy works like this:

  • Assess a fee on the amount of carbon dioxide (or CO2 equivalent) that fuel will emit when burned, starting at $15 per ton, and apply that fee as near as possible at the first point of sale -- wellhead, mine, port of entry.
  • Increase the fee by $10 per ton annually.
  • Return the revenue from that fee equally to all households as a monthly dividend.
  • Protect American businesses by assessing a border adjustment tariff on imports from nations that do not have an equivalent price on carbon. Revenue from the tariff would be used to pay American businesses exporting to nations that do not have a similar price on carbon.

This policy corrects the failure of the marketplace to hold fossil fuels accountable for the damage done to society. By correcting that failure, investments in cleaner forms of energy -- such as solar and wind -- and purchases of low-carbon emitting vehicles -- electric and hybrid vehicles, for example -- will accelerate, eventually reaching the escape velocity necessary to stabilize our climate.

Returning the revenue to households will shield consumers from the economic impact of the carbon fee. Most people will actually receive more from the dividend than they will pay for increased energy costs. The border adjustments, which maintain a level playing field for U.S. businesses, also provide the economic incentive for other countries to follow our lead and initiate their own carbon-pricing policies.

But will it work?

A study done by Regional Economic Models, Inc., looked at the Carbon Fee and Dividend proposal and found that, after 20 years, the policy would reduce CO2 emissions 50 percent below 1990 levels. The REMI study also found that 2.8 million jobs would be added over that time, primarily because of the economic stimulus of returning the revenue to households.

Because it is market based and revenue neutral, this policy also enjoys support among conservatives. In fact, a group of Republican statesmen headed by former Secretaries of State George Shultz and James Baker, the Climate Leadership Council, has proposed a similar policy.

Bipartisan breakthrough in Congress

While most observers assume the chances for effective national legislation on climate change are slim and none, there are encouraging signs that members of Congress can overcome the partisan impasse on this issue.

In January, two Florida congressman -- Republican Carlos Curbelo and Democrat Ted Deutch -- re-established the bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus. The caucus has more than tripled in size since then and now has 56 members with equal representation from both sides of the aisle. In a recent press release,Curbelo said the caucus is “ready to put petty politics aside and find meaningful solutions to the challenges posed by sea level rise and climate change.”

As the caucus approaches the critical mass needed to enact solutions, the focus is gradually shifting from recruitment to action:

  • In February, caucus members Tom Reed (R-NY) and Mike Thompson (D-CA) introduced the Technologies for Energy Security Act (H.R. 1090) to extend tax credits for, among other things, small-scale wind power and geothermal energy. Among the 108 cosponsors of this legislation are half the members of the Climate Solutions Caucus.
  • In May, caucus members John Delaney (D-MD) and John Faso (R-NY) introduced the Climate Solutions Commission Act (H.R. 2326), which would establish a bipartisan panel to review “economically viable actions or policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” and make recommendations to the president, Congress and states.
  • On July 13, caucus Republicans overwhelmingly voted against an anti-climate amendment to the Defense authorization bill, marking the first time that the caucus voted as a bloc to defeat such a measure.

Time to enact revenue-neutral carbon price

The back-to-back catastrophes of Harvey and Irma should be a wake-up call that time is running out to enact national policies that dramatically reduce carbon emissions. As the Republican mayor of Miami, TomásRegalado, told the Miami Herald, “This is the time to talk about climate change. This is the time that the president and the EPA and whoever makes decisions needs to talk about climate change. If this isn’t climate change, I don’t know what is. This is truly, truly a poster child for what is to come.”

As we have seen with previous wake-up calls like Katrina and Sandy, however, it takes more than a catastrophe to move Congress to action. It takes pressure from constituents, newspapers, businesses and community leaders to generate the political will to make climate policy a priority and to pass legislation.

And unless a solution finds support from both sides of the aisle, it has little hope of passage. For that reason, Carbon Fee and Dividend is the policy with the best chance of attracting the bipartisan support to move through Congress.

It can appeal to Republicans because:

  • It is revenue-neutral and will not increase the size of government.
  • It uses a market-based mechanism to achieve its goals rather than regulations.
  • It creates jobs and protects households from economic fallout.

It can appeal to Democrats because:

  • It reduces greenhouse gas emissions at a pace necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
  • It protects low-income households from rising energy costs and provides a net economic gain for many of them.
  • It creates jobs (Hey, Democrats like to create jobs, too!)

The response to this summer’s catastrophes, both from government agencies and private citizens, has been nothing short of heroic. But the cycle of disaster and recovery will eventually spiral beyond our capacity to cope if we fail to fix the underlying problem: excessive carbon emissions driving up temperatures.

It’s something for Congress to think about as the cost of dealing with these disasters escalates.