Space Coast cities support carbon fee and dividend
Jim Waymer
Bucking the Trump administration, the Space Coast League of Cities this week passed a resolution in support of a federal carbon fee and dividend program that would exact a price on carbon dioxide pollution, while sending the money back to households via monthly rebates.
But Congress first would have to create the program.
So activists have been pitching the idea to lawmakers.
"It will probably have to originate in the House of Representatives," said John Saathoff, who heads the Space Coast chapter of the Citizens Climate Lobby, a nonprofit group pushing the concept.
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The program would charge an initial fee of $15 per ton on the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of fossil fuels, increasing $10 per ton per year, according to the resolution.
Annually, the U.S. Department of Energy would determine whether an increase larger than $10 per ton per year is needed "to achieve program goals," the resolution says.
Yearly price increases of at least $10 per year would continue until total national carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions were reduced to 10 percent of 1990 levels.
The money would go into a Carbon Fees Trust Fund. Then equal monthly per-person dividend payments would go to all American households (half payment per child under 18 years old, with a limit of two children per family) each month, the resolution says.
The program could cut greenhouse gas emissions 52 percent below 1990 levels within 20 years, proponents of the fees say.
Because it is simpler to administer, the fee would be assessed "upstream" (at the coal mine, oil well or fracking site), rather than "midstream" (at the power plants or oil refinery), or "downstream" (at the gas pump or at the meter), according to the Climate Lobby.
It's unclear how or whether energy companies would pass the fee on to consumers.
"It will be up to them whether they eat it, or it works its way through to the regional level," Saathoff said.
Monday's resolution by the Space Coast League of Cities is non-binding, said Indialantic Deputy Mayor Stuart Glass, a League of Cities board member who voted for the resolution. The 16 member municipalities would have to decide whether to vote on the resolution, Glass said.
After the Trump administration decision last month to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, dozens of city mayors vowed to keep to emissions targets set forth under the agreement.
Saathoff points to a carbon fee system in British Columbia as an example of how carbon fee systems can succeed in reducing pollution, without harming the economy.
"It's working really well," he said.
The Climate Lobby's website says a carbon fee and dividend policy would be market-based, would drastically cut emissions, create jobs and would support small businesses and families — without growing government.
"It's a nonpartisan resolution," Glass said. "My belief is that sea level rise is real."
Contact Waymer at 321-242-3663 or jwaymer@floridatoday.com Follow him on Twitter @JWayEnviro or www.facebook.com/jim.waymer
Want to get involved?
The Space Coast chapter of the Citizens Climate Lobby meets monthly at the Viera/Suntree library, 902 Jordan Blass Drive, Melbourne, Florida. The next meeting will be at 12 p.m. Saturday, July 15. Call the library at (321) 255-4404.
Learn more here: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/chapters/FL_Space_Coast/