Marin CCL Newsletter

March 6, 2024

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Marin and Sonoma CCL chapters invite you to their hybrid meeting on March 9 at 11AM.

This month, Sonoma CCL will host a hybrid meeting (both in person and online) at Sonoma Clean Power’s Advanced Energy Center on 4th Street in downtown Santa Rosa. Marin chapter will not be hosting, so use the link below at 1100.

We’ll watch the national zoom at 10, then at 11:00 hear Barry Vesser, CEO of The Climate Center, discuss what's happening in California climate legislation (a lot), and how we may be able to work together. Join either in person or online at 11:00.

Marin folks: The Climate Center is located very close to the SMART station in Santa Rosa (741 4th Street), so you can take the 0938 train from San Rafael, arriving at 1044 if you want to come in person, while tuning into the national call on your smart phone and enjoying the scenic ride.

National Call at 10 AM

with both CCL's Conservative Outreach and

Diversity and Inclusion Directors

(We're a big tent organization who knows it's going to take everyone to get the job done.)

Here's the link.

A Carbon Tax is Back on the Table

Shocking but true: an environmental journalist finally acknowledges the political possibility of a national carbon fee in the United States.

Matthew Zeitlan, Heatmap, March 4, 2024:

The Trump tax cuts expire in 2025, which means things are about the get wacky in Washington.

Climate policy has been all over the place lately thanks to pressure from interest groups, pre-election jitters, and the plausibility of a re-elected President Donald Trump laying waste to existing climate policy.

But further in the future, beyond the ups and downs of electoral politics, there’s a policy cataclysm coming that, some hope, could create an opening for that long sought, always denied dream of climate policy: the carbon tax. . . Read on.

And for you wonks, check this out:

Climate tax policy reform options in 2025

Authored by 5 experts from: the Electric Power Research Institute, UCLA School of Law, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Harvard and MIT

With the expiration of many tax cuts and unmet climate targets, 2025 could be a crucial year for climate policy in the United States...The model shows: The emissions reductions of the Inflation Reduction Act are significantly augmented under scenarios that add a modest carbon fee...fiscal costs can be substantially reduced in scenarios that include a carbon fee...although none of the policy combinations across these scenarios achieve the U.S. target of a 50-52% economy-wide emissions reduction by 2030 below 2005 levels, the carbon fee and clean electricity standard scenarios achieve these levels between 2030 and 2035. Read on.

A Trump win could add 4bn tons to US emissions by 2030

“This extra 4bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) by 2030 would cause global climate damages worth more than $900bn, based on the latest US government valuations…4GtCO2e is equivalent to the combined annual emissions of the EU and Japan, or the combined annual total of the world’s 140 lowest-emitting countries. Put another way, the extra 4GtCO2e from a second Trump term would negate – twice over – all of the savings from deploying wind, solar and other clean technologies around the world over the past five years.”

Read it here (then get to work.)

Researchers from MIT recently published a paper detailing the great benefits that would come from passing the BIG WIRES Act (The Building Integrated Grids With Inter-Regional Energy Supply Act for those of us who can't remember what the acronym stands for), and researchers from Vanderbilt published a study about the big role household electrification and efficiency will play in realizing the Inflation Reduction Act's climate pollution reductions potential. We also received an update about the status of the IRA's important home electrification and efficiency rebate programs that have been in development for the past year and a half.

Join CCL Research Coordinator Dana Nuccitelli's excellent training summarizing this new information critical to CCL's clean energy permitting reform, building electrification and efficiency policy areas.

Here's the link.

Activate Your Community Network with a CCL talk!

We're available for speaking opportunities in our community. Can you help spread the word?

Our chapter is fortunate to include several accomplished climate educators who are ready to engage your network with a customized presentation (at no cost.)

If you have contacts at local schools, universities, community clubs (service, social, hobby, professional), faith communities, town councils, local government agencies and the like, please contact us at marincclchapter@gmail.com.

Here's another path to activism in this election cycle: get involved with the nonpartisan EVP, whose mission is to get environmental voters to actually vote. "We identify inactive environmentalists and transform them into consistent voters to build the power of the environmental movement." Do it here.

Do Not Miss This Series!

If you've already seen it, watch it again.

You'll then understand how we got into this mess and what it will take to get us out: Massive political will for robust solutions that the industry will oppose.