When a product gets more expensive, people use less of it. And when pollution goes down, economies rise. So let’s imagine something wonderful.
What if… we had a bill in Congress that charged fossil fuel companies for their pollution, and it worked so well that the GHG emissions the U.S. keeps launching into our atmosphere dropped by half in about 10 years?
What if that
same bill prevented millions of
premature deaths because our air was so much cleaner?
What if that
bill also helped protect our troops by keeping them out of harm’s way?
What if it created millions of clean energy jobs in the U.S.?
What if it
had a border policy that encouraged other countries to follow suit AND protected
U.S. jobs and U.S. companies?
What if this
bill was way stronger than our Paris commitments,
way more effective than the Clean Power
Plan (hitting its targets for 2030 in just 4 years instead of 10 years), and much
stronger than any EPA regulations – existing or pending?
What if 98% of the top economists all over the world said “This works. Pricing carbon is the biggest and most effective first step we could take toward solving the climate crisis.”?
Well we do.
Yes Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus, this bill is real, and it’s called the
Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, HR763.
OK now bear with me… what if, in order for this bill to pass, we had to take all that money that we got from the fossil fuel industry for polluting our atmosphere and give it to other wealthy corporations, or political pet projects, stuff we may not like? Hmm… not so much?
Oh really?
Knowing the severity and the urgency of the crisis we face, just how
badly DO we want to save humanity?
Or on second thought… what if we make this bill socially just as well?
How about we distribute all that money from the fossil fuel industries to EVERYONE, equally, so there’s less political resistance and this bill can actually become law? What if those who can least afford the increases in goods and services end up with MORE money in their pockets than before this bill goes into effect? In fact, those with the lowest incomes, the bottom 60%, would end up ahead. The rest would break even, and only those who could best afford it, those with the highest carbon footprint, would begin see an increase in their costs – that is UNTIL they lower their carbon footprint!
So how do
you like them apples?
No other
bill that’s ever been proposed has come close to this.
We’ll be correcting the market failure that’s been built into our economy by massive and needless subsidies to fossil fuel industries since before any of us were born. It’s revenue neutral, which Conservatives like because it doesn’t grow government. It’s socially just, which Progressives like because it lessens the hardship on those already most burdened. We actually have a shot at passing this groundbreaking bill into law. Please learn more about the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, HR763 at EnergyInnovationAct.org
We need each
of you to spread this knowledge and support this bill far and wide. This planet
is our home, shouldn’t we try?
