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055 | The Citizens Climate Lobby Wants to Spread the Carbon Wealth

Episode February 13, 2020

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Transcript

Today’s guest, Daniel Palken, volunteers with a group called the Citizens Climate Lobby, or “CCL”, which aims to slash US greenhouse-gas emissions by imposing a fee on fossil fuels.

The fee will be based on the amount of greenhouse gas that the coal, gasoline, and jet fuels will generate when we burn them, and it will probably make fossil-fuel energy more expensive.

But there’s a catch — or, the opposite of a catch… a bonus — a dividend, if you will, because that’s what CCL calls it.

Under the proposed “Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act,” all money raised by the carbon fee will go back to US citizens in the form of a dividend.

We each pay into the system based on how much energy we use — whether in the form of an extra few cents at the pump or slightly higher groceries — but every single citizen gets the same dividend back.

A fee-and-dividend system is different from the cap-and-trade programs that I usually focus on, for lots of reasons we get into.

Daniel says that a fee-and-dividend scenario has bilateral support, especially among younger Republicans, and he has the data to back that up.