< 6 Lipstick on a Pigouvian tax an organization sparked by former Vice President Al Gore. The impetus behind the Reality Leadership Corps is similar to the Climate Lobby. They both train citizen soldiers in the battle to combat climate change. The Reality Corps concentrates on influencing the media and using social networks to inspire communities and individuals to take action. The Citizens Climate Lobby taps volunteers to influence legislation. The Climate Lobby holds monthly conference-call meetings that have 500 to 700 people listening to expert speakers. The Climate Lobby also distributes calls for action each month. After the conference call, small groups, like the one in Marin, break off and talk about action in their local areas. Along with the conference call comes a packet of material related to the action issues. This month, the Climate Lobby is focusing on, among other issues, a hearing in the House of Representatives on climate change. That’s a big deal because, as the packet states, “climate change has been missing in action these past few years” in Congress. On Sept. 18, the House Energy and Power Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee will visit the climate-change issue. But climate-change activists are concerned the hearing will present more of an Obama-bashing set piece than a legitimate investigation of ways to meet the climate-change challenge. Still, the issue is on the table for the first time in a while. The loose connection of having a national action issue teamed with local action, says Hedelman, highlights the modus of the Climate Lobby. The local groups take what the national organization has to offer and fashion their own plans. The Marin group set up a meeting with Democratic Congressman Mike Thompson, who represents Napa and the wine country. He’s co-chair of the Wine Caucus. The idea that Hedelman and
Joseph brought to the table is the consequence of climate change on the wine industry. Translating the climate-change issue into dollars and cents make sense when trying to move the needle in the business community. The keystone (pun intended) idea behind using market forces to bend the climate-change curve involves reducing reliance on specific regulations to cut emissions and moving to what’s called a fee-and-dividend strategy. The idea is to put a Pigouvian charge on emissions at the source. The fee would be based on the amount of carbon in a fossil fuel. The fee would increase progressively. It would start low, say $15 per ton, and gradually increase by, say $10, each year. Congress would set the amount of increase. Producers of emissions could decide how to increase efficiencies and otherwise cut carbon emissions, rather than work to comply with increasingly stringent and complex government regulations. “Efficiency becomes a goal,” says Joseph. The fee-and-dividend strategy would be simpler and more effective than the cap-and-trade strategy now employed in California. In that strategy, a set level of emissions is the cap. Producers who emit anything above the cap can trade on their emissions, essentially paying to produce more pollution. The money can go toward pollution reduction programs. Other advocates of harsh measures to curb emissions call for public and private divestment of investments in the fossil-fuel industry. But, says Joseph, that strategy may succeed in tarnishing a company’s image but it fails in the long run. As divestment causes a company’s stock to decline, other investors will be glad to snap up bargains, and the company continues producing and using fossil fuels that generate emissions which enter the economy.
“The best way to achieve divestment,” says Joseph, is a carbon fee. The main advantage of a fee is the price signal it sends to the market, which instantly recognizes that renewable energy is more attractive than fossil fuels.” As the price of fossil fuel and production using fossil fuels increases, industry will search for cost-cutting alternatives. A utility company contemplating building a new generation plan, for instance, would be more inclined to invest in a solar production facility than a fossil-fuel facility if the company knew the price of fossil fuel was on an escalating curve as a result of a fee-and-dividend strategy. It’s the dividend part of the equation that has many people, including industry representatives and legislators, perking their ears. Several permutations of the fee-and-dividend strategy are floating around in their formative stages. In the most progressive version, 100 percent of the fee assessed on carbon would be returned to every American as a regularly disbursed rebate. That’s a plan similar to the oil-income distribution that Alaska residents receive. The rebates would ensure that family budgets could absorb fossil-fuel increases. It makes the proposal revenue neutral. No big infusions of money into government coffers. And that could make the fee-and-dividend proposal attractive, or at least acceptable, to Republicans who disdain any increased taxation. Even fossil-fuel bigwigs like Rex Tillerson, chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil, say that a carbon fee is the way to go to enter an age of energy transformation, better than a volatile cap-and-trade strategy. The fee-and-dividend strategy also is attracting a gaggle of conservative economists who recognize the intense need to curb carbon emissions as good business. If there’s a strategy that also can stimulate a new green economy, which proponents of fee-and-dividend say can happen, so much the better.
The fee-and-dividend strategy doesn’t seem as kooky as it once did. That alteration is similar to the progression of thinking about environmental issues and organic foods. “What is starting to happen,” says Mark Reynolds, executive director of the Climate Lobby, “is enough political cover has emerged for Republicans” to get on the fee and dividend train. But Reynolds and other advocates of the new paradigm are under no illusions. While what he calls “conservative thought leaders” are starting to listen to the fee-and-dividend message, legislators who embrace the strategy publicly are in danger of a primary attack from the far right. “It’s a tough political dynamic.” The Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies set what’s called the social cost of carbon to estimate climate-change effects used in crafting legislation. In May, the Obama administration increased the social cost of carbon from $22 to $36 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted. That increase reflects an increase in estimated consequences. Republican legislators almost immediately pushed back on the increase. It’s avoiding that kind of contretemps and using positive market forces to affect change that proponents think the feeand-dividend strategy can produce. For a time, proponents shied away from even using the word “tax.” They called it a fee. But the nomenclature may have moved to the distinction without a difference territory. “People who are inclined to see it as a tax will see it as a tax,” says Daniel Richter, legislative director for the Climate Lobby. “We’ve given up trying to find a clever word to use instead of calling it a tax.” But one thing remains no matter what anyone calls it, a tax or a fee, it’s still revenue neutral. “We’re seeing more interest in this type of proposal than ever before,” says Richter. ✹ Contact the writer at peter@pseidman.com.
< 6 Newsgrams According to the San Rafael Police Department, a white male in his early 40s made off with an undisclosed amount of cash at about 9:15am Sept. 4; no weapon was seen and no one was injured during the bank robbery. Witnesses told police that the robber matched the description of the Cotton Ball Bandit, a serial bank robbery suspect who is believed to be behind six previous bank holdups in Corte Madera, Greenbrae and Mill Valley. The Central Marin Police Authority had made a press release about the suspect that included photographs and a video clip. Witnesses at the scene who saw CMPA’s images, identified the suspect as one and the same. CMPA officers are calling the serial bank robber the Cotton Ball Bandit because the suspect is known for his brown winter knit beanie, with earflaps, and a ‘cotton ball’ on the top. San Rafael Police describe the suspect as “a white male adult, 40 to 45 years, about 5 feet 10 inches, slight to medium build, unshaven gray stubble, wearing a dark colored knit cap with tassels over the ears, pink T-shirt, black jacket, black jeans with holes in the knees.” SRPD Investigations is working with the Central Marin Police Authority, Marin County Sheriff ’s Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations to identify the suspect. The suspect should be considered armed and dangerous and should not be approached, say SRPD officials. If seen, call 911, the San Rafael Police Department at 415-485-3000 or Crime Stoppers at 800-222-8477. —JW 8 PACIFIC SUN SEPTEMBER 13 - SEPTEMBER 19, 2013