On climate, go past business as usual
I’m
glad that the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups now acknowledge
that climate change is real and caused by greenhouse gas emissions. But the
recent opinion piece by Heritage staff seems to claim that we can’t address
climate change without harming our economy.
Three
thousand five hundred economists, including all living former Federal Reserve
chairs (ie, Alan Greenspan, Janet Yellen) and 27 Nobel Prize winners urge
putting a price on carbon where it is produced and returning all the collected
fees to American households. A recent study aggregated the results of 11 top
peer-reviewed models that simulated the results of such a policy. There was a
clear consensus this would not harm the economy. The study showed it would save
thousands of lives, reduce climate risk, and save money by eliminating a number
of regulations.
HR763
is a bipartisan bill that proposes such a policy and now has 59 co-sponsors in
the House. The bill uses market forces rather than regulations to inspire the
innovation we need to drawdown greenhouse gas emissions. It also offers a just
transition to a cleaner energy economy For the sake of our children’s future, we
need to move beyond “business as usual”
Andrea Farber De Zubiria, Fresno
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