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Join the Marin and Sonoma Chapters' Monthly Membership Call

Saturday, September 14 @ 9 AM PT

CLIMATE POLICY CROSSROADS: 

Finding the Path to U.S. 

and Global Policy Alignment

Presentation by Robert Archer,

former Senior Energy Advisor

U.S. Agency for International Development

Climate tax policy is about to get serious once again due to the expiration of the Trump tax cuts in 2025 and the impending impact of the E.U.'s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) on U.S. industry.

Citizens' Climate Lobby, the only grassroots organization advocating carbon fee, dividend and CBAM, is well positioned to influence the debate (assuming an administration and congress serious about climate.)

Robert Archer, of the Marin Chapter, will assess the circumstances, both global and national, pointing to a promising U.S. path forward addressing global warming. After studying economics at Yale and serving in the Peace Corps, Bob worked for USAID for 25 years on electricity reforms in Asia and the former Soviet Union, learning what works and what doesn't, especially in countries with weak institutions, serious corruption and major carbon pollution.

You can prepare for this presentation by watching Sen. Whitehouse's crystal clear interview at the Brookings Institution on why carbon pricing is essential, and "frankly, not that difficult."

Come with your questions and prepare to be enlightened.

Here's the link.

Then join the National call at 10 here.

September's meeting will be with Dr. Dan Arely, Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight. Dan does research in behavioral economics and tries to describe it in plain language.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on Carbon Pricing :

"THERE’S NO OTHER PATH TO CLIMATE SAFETY"

 “If we want a path to climate safety, it’s going to require us to do what is economically and morally right, which is to price carbon pollution.”

"The United States currently does not have a federal carbon pricing program, but that may change due to a confluence of factors, including accelerating climate impacts, U.S. net zero targets, and motivation to address the federal deficit. Global economic pressures play a role, too, as an increasing number of countries tax imported goods based on the amount of pollution that’s required to make them. The European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)—a tariff that will predominantly impact imported goods from the cement, electricity, fertilizer, some metals, and hydrogen sectors from countries outside the EU—will take effect in 2026."

Read more here.

New Study Confirms That Real-World Carbon Pricing Works

WSJ: "An evaluation of more than 1,500 climate policies in 41 countries found that only 63 actually worked to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

"Subsidies and regulations—policy types often favored by governments—rarely worked to reduce emissions, the study found, unless they were combined with price-based strategies aimed at changing consumer and corporate behavior."

What has worked to fight climate change? Policies where someone pays for polluting. The key ingredient if you want to reduce emissions is that you have pricing in the policy mix. (Is anyone really surprised?)

Science (Original paper)

NYT

WSJ

Nature

Science historian Naomi Oreskes schools the Supreme Court on climate change

"In a 2007 decision, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens contended that when Congress passed the Clean Air Act of 1970, “the study of climate change was in its infancy” and it wasn’t until later that decade that the federal government “began devoting serious attention to the possibility that carbon dioxide emissions associated with human activity could provoke climate change.” Even so, the Court found in Massachusetts v. EPA that the Clean Air Act authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as air pollutants, because the act was “capacious” in its definition of air pollutants.

A 2022 decision by a starkly different Supreme Court all but reversed the Massachusetts decision, greatly curtailing the EPA’s ability to limit power plant emissions of carbon dioxide. The basis of the decision in that case,West Virginia v. EPA, involved a new and hotly contested legal theory: the so-called “major questions doctrine” that the current, conservative-dominated Court has adopted. Under that doctrine, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, there must have been “clear congressional authorization” for executive branch agencies such as the EPA to take actions with “vast economic and political significance.” The decision holds that there was no such authorization, greatly limiting the EPA’s efforts to regulate carbon emissions from power plants.

Considered together, the Massachusetts and West Virginia cases raise an important question: Did Congress understand that regulating air pollutants like carbon dioxide would have vast economic and political impacts when it passed the Clean Air Act more than 50 years ago?

The answer to that question, according to a new paper in the Ecology Law Review, is clearly “yes.”

Read this fascinating account of disinformation -- not only about climate, but tobacco and toxic chemicals -- with the author of Merchants of Doubt, Harvard historian Naomi Oreskes, here.

The Tipping Points of Climate Change — and Where We Stand | Johan Rockström | TED

Should your climate anxiety level need to be further jolted into the stratosphere, try to tolerate 18 minutes with this world renowned scientist, who explains why earth scientists are "getting nervous" to say the least.

He demonstrates that climate tipping points are already here, that the changes are accelerating, buffering systems are weakening, we are way behind and we are about to lose control....

But there is still hope that if we act really fast we might be able to stabilize Earth's climate in a habitable zone, a great reason to finally harness the global energy economy with CCL's carbon fee and dividend policy and to forcibly apply the brakes on fossil fuel consumption -- before it's too late. It's not the only thing we must do, but it's essential.

Brace yourself.

Project 2025 “Training Videos” Leaked

You've got to see this to believe it!

(She may look harmless, but...)

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."

Their leader, Nathanial Stinnett addressed CCL's D.C. conference on June 9. Watch his inspiring talk here.

Then watch how CCL is engaging in the upcoming elections, and how to make climate an electoral issue.

The Election Engagement Action Team is in full swing. You can help get out the climate vote!

Forewarned:

How Project 2025 Will Gut Climate Regs

And the contrast...

Here’s where Kamala Harris stands on climate and energy:

CNN

NYT

VOX

Do Not Miss This Series!

If you've already seen it, watch it again. You'll then understand how we got into this mess -- Denial, Doubt and Delay -- and what it will take to get us out: Massive popular political pressure supporting robust solutions that this industry and their agents will inevitably oppose.

You're invited, but...

This is how one behaves inside The Capitol:

Make an appointment. Business attire recommended. Bring nothing that even looks like a weapon.

Long live Democracy.

Prepared by Peter G. Joseph, M.D. 

Peter.Joseph@cclvolunteer.org

Apologies for cross postings.

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