Some things in medicine are just common sense. Don’t brush your teeth, and you will get cavities. Bask in Utah sun continually, and you will get skin cancer. Smoke two packs of cigarettes for 50 years, and you will get lung cancer or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Ignore the signs of climate change, and we will get a planet, our planet, that according to the recently released 6th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is now warmer than it’s been in 125,000 years.
Let that soak in.
And we in Utah get the foul air we are now breathing because of the record-breaking fires in California. And Tennessee gets record-breaking flooding. And North Dakota gets drought causing farmers to sell their farms and livestock. These specific climate events from this summer are a stark reminder of the multiple effects of climate change that are now our reality.
More generally, the increasing temperatures, larger and more frequent fires, hurricanes, and floods, longer periods of drought, agricultural degradation, melting of glaciers/Arctic ice, and rising sea levels are all happening not just in the USA, but worldwide, just as climate models have long predicted.
Why is this happening? That, it turns out, is also common sense. As the IPCC report again reminds us, climate change is unequivocally being driven by the burning of fossil fuels.
What’s new and important is that climate scientists can now say with much more certainty how our planet will respond to increasing levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in our atmosphere. Under all emissions scenarios, temperatures will reach 1.5 °C above 1850-1900 levels by 2040.
In a moderate emissions scenario that features little change from today’s global-development patterns, average global temperatures will rise by 2.1 to 3.5 °C. This is too high. It is well above the 1.5 to 2 °C limit that signatories to the 2015 Paris climate agreement agreed not to exceed because to do so would be unacceptably risky.
While there still remains a glimmer of hope that we can limit global warming to 1.5 °C and avoid the most dire effects of climate change, it’s not going to happen unless there are immediate, rapid, and large-scale reductions of all GHGs. It’s very simple. We must act NOW.
Fortunately, a large reconciliation budget package currently being developed in Congress, if passed, will likely address one of the most urgent needs in getting to a carbon-free future: electrifying our cars/other vehicles and our buildings (heating/cooling). The current bill includes a clean energy standard (CES). A Carbon Fee and Dividend proposal (CFD) is also under consideration.
A clean energy standard requires utilities to gradually, over years, increase the proportion of green energy (solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, nuclear) they generate until finally all the energy they produce is carbon-free.
Carbon fee and dividend works more generally by applying a fee (a carbon tax) proportional to the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that is liberated in any product’s production. The fee on fossil fuels, for example, would be assessed at its point of origin—a wellhead, mine, or port of origin. Utilities generating electricity from the burning of coal or gas would have to pay more for them. Whereas energy that was generated by solar or wind would not incur a carbon fee and would become relatively cheaper. Other industrial processes which liberate a lot of CO2 and are contributing to our climate change problem, such as the production of steel, cement, plastics, and fertilizer, which are not covered by a CES plan, would be taxed under a CFD plan.
Most economists agree that a carbon tax “offers the most cost-effective lever to reduce carbon emissions at the scale and speed that is necessary.” It is much more effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating temperature increases than the clean energy standard currently in the reconciliation budget package.
A carbon tax that increases every year until emission reduction goals are met, economists say, encourages technological innovation and large-scale infrastructure development.
By substituting a price signal for cumbersome regulations, a carbon tax will promote economic growth and provide the regulatory certainty companies need for long-term investment in clean-energy alternatives.
By returning all revenues from the carbon tax (fee) directly to U.S. citizens through equal lump-sum rebates (dividends), the carbon fee and dividend plan protects the most economically vulnerable while not increasing the size of the government.
Finally, a carbon tax that incorporates a border carbon adjustment enhances the competitiveness of American firms that are more energy-efficient than their global competitors AND creates an incentive for other nations to adopt similar carbon pricing (if they want to competitively sell their products in the USA).
Both CFD and CES would help in attaining the goal of keeping global temperatures below 2°C, but neither would be sufficient alone. It is important to recognize that to keep temperatures below 2°Cwill require among other things reducing methane production (leakage during extraction of natural gas, livestock flatulence/manure, solid waste landfills) and figuring out a cost-effective way of taking CO2 out of the air and sequestering it. Currently, carbon sequestration is neither economical nor ready to be implemented at the scale that we need.
A carbon fee and dividend plan is tailored to appeal to Republican legislators who as a group tend to prefer efficient market-based solutions, and rail against those solutions featuring over-regulation or ones that increase the size of the government. One might think that most Republicans would avidly support such a plan. But, I fear, that won’t happen.
Unfortunately, Republican legislators’ political futures are deep connected to the fossil fuel industries. Fossil fuel industries overwhelming financially support Republicans. In thanks, Republicans bend over backwards to limit regulations that negatively affect these businesses’ bottom line, even when doing so hurts the global common interest.
Carbon fee and dividend will make fossil fuels more expensive; that’s the point. It is in the global common interest that fossil fuel products are priced to reflect their true cost to society. We can no longer afford to allow fossil fuel companies to pollute our air with carbon dioxide for free.
Accordingly, Republicans have been waging a disinformation campaign against climate change regulations for over 30 years, which has successfully prevented the necessary political action to adequately address the problem.
Over the years, their messaging has included a mixture of the following: Adamantly denying the existence of climate change. Admitting that while climate might exist, it was solely due to natural causes. Admitting that climate change might be due to the burning of fossil fuels, but arguing the data was still too preliminary to warrant the expense of doing anything about it. The 6th IPCC report disabuses each of these arguments.
As the reconciliation budget package plays out in the news over the next month, watch as the more enlightened appearing Republican congressmen and senators (legislators) pretend to be concerned about climate change by saying the right things, but only offer vague promises about unleashing private innovation and promoting fossil fuels as part of the solution. These solutions inevitably never antagonize their financial backers or have a prayer of significantly addressing this enormously complex problem.
So, what to do? First, pretend that I am wrong (and I desperately want to be) and assume that Republican legislators are persuadable, and might vote in a way that prioritized the common good over what is politically good for them. In this case, we must let these legislators know with a deluge of phone calls, letters, and emails that we understand very clearly that the climate problem is grave and the time short. We also understand that the reconciliation package may include other programs of which they are not fond, but the necessity of acting quickly and decisively on climate change necessitates accepting other features of this package.
Then, watch closely how our legislators vote. If our pleas are met by deaf ears, (and if you believe we have a moral commitment, as I do, to our kids, our grandkids, and to future generations of humanity around the world to leave them a planet as welcoming as the one we inherited), then we are obligated to vote for politicians whose horizons expand beyond their next election, and far into the future.
At this time, only the Democrats grasp both the scale of the problem and have offered legislation that seriously addresses it. I call on Mitt Romney to move beyond just voicing approval for a carbon tax in the press, and instead to act with a sense of mission and urgency that will cement his legacy as the preeminent Republican legislator who rose yet again to the occasion when his country needed him. I welcome Representative John Curtis, leader of the conservative climate caucus, to seize the moment and convince his caucus to support the Carbon Fee and Dividend plan as the alternative that best incorporates Republican principles.
If these Republicans fail to support the climate legislation in the Budget Reconciliation Package, they will have squandered an opportunity to help shape the climate policy, which as the 6th IPCC tells us, we desperately need to implement now, if we want to conserve the world’s environment as we know it.
Failure to pass the Budget Reconciliation Package is an act of gross negligence because if Republicans win the House in 2022 or the Presidency in 2024, the prospect of passing meaningful climate legislation over the next seven years falls dramatically. We cannot let that happen. We simply don’t have the time.
If Republicans torpedo the budget reconciliation package, they leave us little choice but to open our wallets and generously support democratic congressmen and senators in tight races around the nation in 2022 and 2024. Because right now, it’s the democrats alone who understand the significance of the moment and who are the only party with serious plans for addressing our planet’s existential crisis.
My fellow citizens, this is a Code Red. Our planet is on fire, and the conflagration is only going to get worse unless we act decisively now. It’s an emergency. I repeat, this is a Code Red.
Justin F. Thulin, M.D., is a dermatologist practicing in Salt Lake City.
Justin F. Thulin, M.D., is a retired physician who lives in Salt Lake City.