I just sent the following letter to a couple dozen news organizations and reporters, and several congresspeople. I’m just getting started.
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To every news organization and reporter and every congressperson I can reach:
Please investigate Deutch-Rooney, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. I just read through it, twice: it is a scam and a hoax that will convince people that something is being done about climate change when it will do absolutely nothing, except give the fossils a get-out-of-jail-free card and let them run amok , wasting our last ten years to get ahead of planetary disaster.
D-R would charge fossil fuels producers (the fossils), manufacturers of other greenhouse gasses like refrigerants, and of high-carbon products, taxes and fees which those fossils would be free to pass on to consumers: the cost of everything will go up. Even if we get money back from it every month, it will hurt people who live hand-to-mouth. There is no incentive, for most of us, in money taken from one pocket and put back into another at the end of the month, and no help in this legislation for people to reduce their consumption or switch to lower-carbon fuels. It lets farmers out entirely—and while we want to protect farmers and our food supply, farming is around 25% of GHG production, and we do need to incentivize farmers; and its emissions reduction targets are far too little, far too slow. And it would pay polluting entities, out of the rebate fund, to capture and store their emissions, instead of simply mandating they do so. I see absolutely no incentive in it to make the fossils change their ways.
To the contrary, Deutch-Rooney would return the carbon taxes paid by fossil industries to those industries, as long as they export their fossil fuels and high-carbon products. The owners of the 75 (last I checked) mile-long oil trains through Vancouver, WA, every day, sending petroleum stolen from public lands for 1/8 of its actual value off to Asia, would pay no carbon taxes; and there is a divisor in the formula for determining the tax for importing carbon that looks like it might reduce that tax to less than zero (p21). And in return for passing the taxes they do pay on to consumers, the fossil fuel monsters get immunity from most regulation, for at least ten years before the EPA even assesses the efficacy of the carbon tax (P36). I am unclear, yet—guess I need to read it a third time—if D-R renders the fossils immune from prosecution and lawsuit as some journalists have said. An even worse bill, Baker –Schultz, would roll back most GHG regulations in exchange for a smaller carbon dividend. It is obvious that the fossils wrote this legislation. They are the criminals in this farce, and they belong in prison, not writing legislation for compromised politicians to rubber stamp.
Please understand: I want a carbon tax. And I won’t mind a rebate to poor/working people. But I want congress to at least try to ensure that the fossils, not the consumers, will pay it, because the fossils, not the people, need the incentive; I want much of the money to go into a revolving fund*that lends people the money to make their homes and business as low-carbon as possible, that lends aluminum/steel mfrs the money to switch to the new carbon-free smelting processes being developed at MIT and in Canada, to help farmers use Terra Preta and Enhanced Weathering to sequester carbon while they improve their soils just as the world gets hungrier….
But if I am charged a carbon tax, in essence punished to force me to conserve/change fuels (when I already do all I can with what is available to me, and I am an old energy conservation consultant so I know how) while the fossils continue to receive $649 billion a year** in direct and indirect subsidies for destroying the planet; while they essentially steal gas oil coal from public lands and export them as fast as possible; while government continues to allow and incentivize new fossil-fuel infrastructure, I will consider this version of a carbon tax to be either amazingly stupid, or an insult to my/our intelligence, or both--I will consider it schizophrenic--and I will consider it tyranny and I will resist.
End all subsidies to the fossils first, and instead subsidize the best of the new clean tech coming on line. Ban exports, from public lands at the least; charge the extractors the full value of fuels from public lands, not 12.5 cents on the dollar; and no tax breaks for exported or imported fuels or carbon. If the fossils get taxed twice, it will give them more incentive to go carbon free. The fossils abide by all clean air and GHG-emissions regulations or their executives go to prison; they are mandated, not paid, to use carbon capture and storage on existing coal AND gas plants, and forbidden to build new plants fueled by either, or any new pipelines. And they get no immunity from either lawsuit or prosecution. Then you can carbon-tax me--and use the money to help save the planet, not in some lame tax-and rebate shell game that won’t do anything useful and will waste our last ten years.
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News orgs, please investigate and report on Deutch-Rooney. Contact me if I can help.
Congressfolks, please don’t fall for this scam.
https://teddeutch.house.gov/uploadedfiles/deutch_014_xml_116th.pdf
https://teddeutch.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=399493 –See the fifth paragraph: Rooney is still flogging “natural” gas. Those of us who pay attention have known that fossil methane is as bad as coal, because the frackers and pipes leak so much of it to atmo, for years. Whether he is so far behind as to not know that, or takes gas producer money, Rooney has no business working on climate change legislation.
*Along with monies/assets confiscated from the fossils when we prosecute them for their crime against humanity, lying to us for 40 years while they continue to try to bring about the end of the species.
**International Monetary Fund estimate for 2015, https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/fossil-fuel-subsidies-pentagon-spending-imf-report-833035/
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07032019/carbon-tax-proposals-compare-baker-shultz-exxon-conocophillips-ccl-congress
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Climate change is dead serious, and twits—and that’s the nicest word I can think of at the moment—like Deutch and Rooney and their bill’s co-sponsors are still sucking up to the fossil’s money, trying to let them run amok in exchange for very little. Bernie’s right. We need a revolution.