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LINK This Climate Bill Would Actually Send Checks To Americans. Can It Help Save The Planet And Grow Our Economy?

"Economists, leading voices in the business community, and many others believe that the most promising single policy solution is a price on carbon. The carbon pricing mechanism most talked about is a carbon tax. Unfortunately, there’s a roadblock: the word “tax.” Almost without fail, knee-jerk objections arise: “it won’t work,” “Republicans and businesses will fight against it tooth and nail,” “it will kill small businesses,” and “it won’t help my community.” But what if a carbon tax created jobs, grew the economy, and its revenues were used to send a monthly check to U.S. households?"


Question: How do you feel about such a policy?

AnonySchmoose 8 Aug 5
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6 comments

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1

This is like paying the guy with the gun at your head not to shoot you and your kids, today.
Money is not the solution it is the problem climate change has come about because of profiteering and not caring about the consequences.
When the guy points the gun at your head, you do not pay him, you certainly don't worry that by not paying him you are robbing of his livelihood.
You call a cop and you have him arrested for threatening you and your family's lives!

@LenHazell53
Carbon fee and dividend is a necessary propeller to get the synthesis of silver buckshot to work. I found a 10-minute video for you to explain why CF&D is necessary and how it can interact in the synthesis of all of the silver buckshot needed to lower global temperature. The simulator tool "was developed by Climate Interactive at MIT, Ventana Systems, and MIT Sloan, runs on an ordinary laptop in a fraction of a second, is available online, offers an intuitive interface, has been carefully grounded in the best available science, and has been calibrated against a wide range of existing integrated assessment, climate and energy models." [climateinteractive.org]


Drew Jones at the Explorers Club 2019

@AnonySchmoose Fine idealism.
Unfortunately, in real life every one of those measures would be contested by industry, by unions, by people fearing for their livelihoods and by politicians fearing for their votes.
It would be hindered by compromise, outright rejection and the demand that “another way” be found. Another way that would face the same round of objections.
There is only one solution, and it is horrible. If the human race is to survive, there has to be an 80% reduction of the human race. There has to be a rebalance between supply and demand. It could have been avoided, had we listened to those with foresight in the last century, but we did not.
“Live for today and let the 'Devil' take tomorrow”
Well the devil is taking his due, the horsemen have ridden out, we have plague, we have war, we have famine, and we have death.
And the great irony is that they are all of us, the only thing that will save us as a species is an unstoppable culling of our own making.

1

It's a lot better than doing nothing.

For sure. It definitely makes sense to charge the polluters and bring a market-driven change in the economy to divest from fossil fuels, and instead create jobs and profitability from new zero-carbon forms of energy, infrastructure, and production methods.

2

Anything man can do to thwart Climate Change will not be a good thing for the Earth. Man has come to their end and the present condition of economics and politics shows us this. The spreadsheet is the most powerful thing on Earth, it was created by man to keep track of the damage to the Earth. Let the Earth life free of humans and the world will be better for it. All we have to do is nothing, it is easy and a few people will even get rich.

There are far too many ignorant humans, but IMHO that does not discount the brilliant efforts and inventions of conscientious scientists, economists, zero carbon energy innovators, climate change activists, and social democracies. I am witnessing that in action -- the reasons for which I have volunteered.

@AnonySchmoose
"the brilliant efforts and inventions of conscientious scientists, economists, zero carbon energy innovators, climate change activists,"

There was never a need for climate change, the first private motor vehicles ever invented where electric, the diesel engine was invented to run on biofuels (Corn Oil), smokeless coke was invented to extract the noxious gases out of coal BEFORE it was burned. They were all suppressed (how else do you think electric car manufactures suddenly made the technological leap forward when they HAD to, because the oil is running out?).
10 Years ago, an Indian scientist patented a compressed air engine car, completely clean. Where is it now?
Like all the others I mentioned they were bought up by the fossil fuel industry and suppressed, so they could carry on selling their filthy world killing products, until such time as they had extracted the maximum amount of profit.

@LenHazell53
We know that the power/money mongers have always prevented early good inventions from coming to fruition. Now is the time to wake up the world about what power and greed are capable of doing to our species and most other species on earth. Climate change is an enormous wake-up call that demonstrates humans' stupidity and hubris. Young people will notice the changes to the environment and to how the earth cannot deal with our species anymore. It is time to think clearly and then commit to any and all necessary steps. It can be done if most of the world wakes up to the looming dangers, but we cannot afford to be stubborn or pessimistic.

@LenHazell53
IPCC report issued this August 9th:
Climate change widespread, rapid, and intensifying –
IPCC

[ipcc.ch]

@AnonySchmoose Climate change has been warned about since the 1950s when it was ignored, by the 1970 the "Hole in the Ozone layer" was common knowledge and so was its effects on the climate, yet successive governments refused to ban Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), with the UK phasing them out by 2020 and the US claiming they cannot consider it before 2040.
Honestly, it is too late, we are the little Dutch boy sticking his finger in a damn that has already breached and flooded the town.

2

Excellent idea

That is for sure.
One good idea to bolster many other good ideas as yet to be implemented. I believe all of that can be done.

2

Money in my pocket today will always trump (no pun intended) staying alive tomorrow.
I can even recall in the 1970s people talking with my father and saying
"I don't care about the environment and pollution by the time it becomes a problem I'll be long since dead. But petrol (gas) going up to 63p ($0.30 back then) a gallon, that's a problem for now."

With a carbon fee and dividend policy, the rise in gas prices will be offset by dividends to citizens.
Am puzzled by... money trumps staying alive...?

@AnonySchmoose Not for the individual sane person, but for a society run by Republicans in the US and Conservatives in the UK, the capitalist economy will always mean more than lives lost.
WWII was a purging of a worldwide recession, millions died and population was brought under control.
If you don't believe me, look at Britain and the US reactions to the COVID-19 crisis. Two of the worst in the world, with our prime minister being caught saying that he does not care if “Bodies are piled high in the streets” so long as the shops open and the economy recovers. Yet he stays in power, and Trumps advocating the drinking of Bleach, and Biden's “solutions” being less ridiculous but not really any better.
People are an infinitely renewable resource. They will go along with the idea that some have to die, so the price of beer will not go up, so long as you can convince them that those people will of course be someone else, not them.

@LenHazell53
I agree with your analysis completely on this. It is astonishing how stupid, selfish, greedy, uncaring our populations are, but I have already been aware and suffered the consequences of this inhumane mainstream trend for many decades. Friends and family have died or lost their health permanently due to insane victimization brought on by the status quo. The U.S. ultra-right conservatives have ignored and downplayed their own parts in racism, voting rights injustice, financial unfairness and inequality, murder, mayhem, spread of the pandemic, climate change, political polarization. And many moderate U.S. democrats have enabled them for far too long. The U.S. has gone back to the times of Reconstruction after the Civicl War, when slaves were freed but their lives still in dire peril. The Southern U.S. conservative States are ramping up another Reconstruction. Along with intense systemic racism, intensely unjust repression of women's rights is also taking place here. Racism and mysogyny are bringing general havoc to the entire nation.

3

I've been a Supporter of the Carbon Tax for awhile..and fuck the NeoNazi Party, they're gonna face some serious backlash at the polls, as will Mod Dems..
The plan has always been to reinvest the monies into new infrastructure and offset the tax burden on small businesses. Adding monthly refunds directly to Americans would absolutely be a boon for the economy.

I hope the Mod Dems face as much backlash as the NeoNazis.
In comparison of the U.S. infrastructure with that of other developed nations,
the U.S. drags its feet.

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