A taxing issue

Even GOP heavyweights say it’s time to move forward in addressing carbon emissions.

Amid the gloom in Washington for those dismayed by President Donald Trump’s positions on climate change, a ray of hope appeared last week in the form of Houston’s own James A. Baker III.

The former secretary of state and longtime associate of former President George H.W. Bush went to the nation’s capital to suggest to the new administration that a tax on carbon dioxide emissions would be a simple, effective way of reducing the heat-trapping gas that is rapidly warming our world.

Baker was there as part of the Climate Leadership Council, a group of big-name Republicans including former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and former Wal-Mart chairman Rob Walton who are trying to talk some sense into climate change-deniers who now dominate their party.

They argue that putting a $40-a-ton tax on carbon emissions, which are a byproduct of the burning of hydrocarbons, would cut those emissions 28 percent by 2025. They propose giving the money collected directly to the American taxpayers, which they estimate would come to about $2,000 a year per family of four.

It’s a good, simple idea but Baker acknowledged to Chronicle reporter James Osborne that its approval faced an “uphill climb.”

He didn’t say it, but one big obstacle is President Trump’s apparent disdain for the problem of global warming.

Trump has threatened to reverse important steps taken by President Barack Obama, including the signing of the global Paris Agreement to fight warming and the formulation of the Clean Power Plan to cut our country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Trump has called climate change a “Chinese hoax” and argued that China wasn’t doing anything about global warming so we shouldn’t either. But China, the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases, plans to launch a carbon emissions cap-and-trade market this year that essentially will have the same effect as a carbon tax.

The U.S. is second to China in carbon emissions, but on a per capita basis leads the world by a wide margin.

As we experience a remarkably warm February, let’s let these facts from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, both centers for atmospheric research, speak for themselves:

• Earth’s 2016 surface temperatures were the warmest since modern recordkeeping began in 1880.

• Average temperatures last year were 1.78 degrees Fahrenheit (0.99 C) warmer than the mid-20th century mean.

• Sixteen of the 17 warmest years on record have occurred in this century.

This is happening because we humans are pouring 80 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each day, the biggest parts of it from power generation and transportation.

Atmospheric measurements have been taken at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii since 1958, during which time carbon dioxide levels have risen from 315 parts per million to, as of Tuesday, 406.21 ppm. Some climatologists believe 350 ppm, which was reached around 1990, is the tipping point for change.

We strongly urge Baker and his colleagues to push their plan vigorously with their fellow Republicans, who we hope will act more responsibly on environmental issues than they have the past eight years.

A carbon tax is not the complete solution to global warming, but it’s a significant step forward on a problem that, as the numbers show, is becoming urgent.