Quirky weather sends message

In the lead up to Earth Day, which was Sunday, the natural world was sending us an urgent message, if we’re willing to pay attention.

We had spring weather in February and an unusually cold month of March. A strong nor’easter knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of homes across the region. Many families had to wait in the cold and dark for days until power could be restored.

The mass power outages cost millions of dollars to repair, disrupted businesses, closed schools, and left many people with refrigerators full of spoiled food.

This strange “spring” is just one more example of how our weather is becoming more erratic, with more intense storms that inflict ever-more costly damage.

This chaotic change in our climate is exactly what scientists tell us to expect as we 7 billion humans fill the atmosphere with greenhouse gases that are warming the planet.

In 1970, the first Earth Day drew some 20 million people to events and helped launch the modern environmental protection movement. That surge of citizen action brought us new laws that have slashed the pollution that used to foul our air, our rivers and our landscapes.

We no longer see smokestacks belching clouds of pollution into the air, sewage pouring into our rivers or companies dumping toxic waste wherever they please.

On this Earth Day, we need another surge of citizen action – this time, to attack the pollution that is driving climate change. The good news is that this can be done in a way that is good for the environment and the economy.

The main source of greenhouse gas pollution is from using fossil fuels – coal, oil, and natural gas. As they are burned, they fill our air with carbon dioxide (CO2) and other carbon pollutants, which causes our atmosphere to trap more of the heat our planet gets from the sun.

Instead of letting fossil fuel companies use our atmosphere as a free dumping ground, we should charge them a pollution fee, to fully reflect the cost of the damage that using their product inflicts. By steadily making fossil fuels more expensive, we can wean the economy away from these dirty energy supplies and speed up the transition to clean, planet-saving energy sources.

This pollution fee can be designed in a way that actually helps the economy and most consumers.

The key is to refund ALL the money collected in equal payments to every American adult.

The cost of energy and other goods will go up, but for most people, the higher costs will be more than covered by the rebate, or dividend, they receive.

In 20 years, this “Carbon Fee and Dividend” would create 2.8 million net new jobs, grow the economy by more than $1 trillion and cut our country’s greenhouse gas pollution by half. (That’s according to a sophisticated study by REMI, Regional Economic Modeling Inc., prepared on behalf of Citizens Climate Lobby.) This “Carbon Fee and Dividend” is fair. Those who inflict the most damage from using fossil fuels pay the most.

The majority of Americans will actually get back more money from the dividend than they pay through higher prices. The dividends protect the poor and the elderly, and they reward those who choose to cut their energy use – the dividend stays the same even as their energy use goes down.

The concept of fully refundable fee on carbon pollution has impressive bipartisan support. Progressives know it will help fight climate change, and it’s fair to those who’d be hurt by higher energy costs.

A growing number of responsible conservatives, like former Republican Secretary of State George Shultz, support it, because it uses a marketbased economic mechanism – increasing the price of dirty energy – to drive the change we need, and refunding the fee prevents politicians from spending the money on more government programs.

All of this year’s candidates for Congress in our area should pledge to help pass a Carbon Fee and Dividend if elected. But it won’t happen unless we citizens awaken and demand the change we need, just as an earlier generation did on the first Earth Day in 1970.