One last chance for a price on carbon

This week we got some very bad news about climate change. The latest report from the IPCC tells us that, no matter what we do, the earth is going to continue to get hotter for at least the next 30 years. We're in for overall warming of at least 1.5 degrees Celsius, complete with life-threatening heat waves, crop-destroying droughts, increasingly powerful hurricanes, coral reef die-offs, and one to two feet of sea level rise. And that's the best outcome. If we don't take immediate and dramatic action to curb carbon emissions and start drawing down existing carbon — within the next four years — we could see warming of up to 4 degrees, which is pretty much game over.

But there was also some good news: our government is closer than ever before to doing something about it. The budget bill that just passed the Senate includes plans for a clean electricity standard, tax incentives and research grants for renewable energy, and tariffs on goods from countries with weaker emissions standards.

However, there's one piece that's missing: a carbon fee.

As I explained last year, this is an incredibly simple and powerful idea to reduce carbon emissions by simply making them more expensive. It requires no complicated government oversight and allows polluters to choose their own approach to reducing emissions, using existing technologies or developing new ones. It would let the market find the most cost-effective solutions automatically. And better still, the money collected from the carbon fee could be distributed directly to taxpayers as a carbon dividend, offsetting the increased costs of fuel (while still giving consumers an incentive to cut their usage and save still more). So it helps the climate and puts money straight into your wallet. Who could say no to that?

You can read more details about carbon taxes in my Money Crashers article on the topic, but according to The Atlantic, you'd be wasting your time. Last month, that publication declared the carbon tax — an idea it described as "straightforward, perhaps even beautiful" and "a particular favorite of the economics profession" — to be officially dead, saying President Biden had demonstrated an "utter lack of interest in passing it" in the face of overwhelming opposition from the fossil fuel industry. This despite the fact that lots of other countries already have them, and Europe is now planning an extra tax on imports from countries that don't.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

See, the infrastructure bill was just the appetizer. The main course is the budget bill the Senate also unveiled its plan for last week. It's going to include a lot of the clean-energy provisions that got cut from the infrastructure bill, and a price on carbon could be one of them — if enough people tell their members of Congress they want it. And you, yes, you, could be one of those people.

It's very simple. Just go to the website of the Citizens' Climate Lobby (CCL) and click on "Take Action" to "Write Congress" or "Call Congress," or both. It will find you the names and contact into of your Senators and Representative and even provide a message to include in your call or email. The CCL suggests wording the request slightly differently depending on whether your member of Congress is a Democrat ("I'm a constituent, and I’m calling/writing to urge you to support and advocate for a carbon price in the reconciliation package") or a Republican ("I'm a constituent, and I’m calling/writing to urge you to enact a federal carbon price so that U.S. businesses can avoid paying Europe’s border tariff and remain internationally competitive"), but either way, it takes five minutes.

If members of Congress are absolutely deluged with requests for a carbon fee, there's still a chance it can make it into the final budget. The CCL calls this the best chance we've had to get a carbon price through Congress in over a decade.

It's just five minutes of your time, and it could make all the difference for the future of our species.