The news cycle over the last month has been filled with disaster, the most obvious being the brutal assault on Ukraine by an unstable regime with seemingly little concern for the future. This metastasizing crisis for an international order that has stood since the end of the Cold War is inseparable from a bigger looming crisis long unaddressed by the global community.
As the West deliberates its ties to Russian natural gas, linked through Europe’s landscape in a tapestry of pipelines, it’s worth considering our links more generally to unsustainable, tenuous and deadly energy sources.
The Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change recently published a report that found our ability to adapt is being rapidly outpaced by the acceleration of a changing climate.
As a high school student, I inhabit a generation whose political space is consumed by a near-omnipotent level of climate anxiety. In the next 20 years, the IPCC reports that global temperatures are likely to rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, with accelerating consequences. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls the report a “code red for humanity.”
By 2050, Jakarta, the Indonesian capital of nearly 36 million people, is estimated to be the first metropolis to become completely submerged by rising oceans.
Utah is not far from the front line of the impending climate crisis, one that will upend not only our economic and political existence but the viability of our continued life on this planet. This much, unfortunately, is obvious. Solutions are less so, and an issue so complex and nuanced could not possibly be addressed in a myopic manner.
But one action stands out: a national carbon fee and dividend policy. This policy places a steadily increasing price on carbon, the main culprit in rising global warming emissions, speeding the transition to cleaner energy options throughout the economy, from the major industrial polluters down to the individual consumer.
The revenue from a carbon price can be redistributed directly back to American households, as a “carbon cashback” check, protecting families from higher costs and fighting against inflation. Lastly, a border carbon adjustment, a fee levied on the carbon emissions resulting from the production of an imported good could be used to impose international pressure for other countries to transition to renewables.
Such an elegantly simplistic solution may seem confined to a certain level of economic dreaming, but it holds surprisingly pragmatic promise. It’s also by no means unpopular. The bipartisan momentum that this policy summons is a breath of fresh air in federal politics, garnering support from everyone from Sen. Bernie Sanders to Utah’s Sen. Mitt Romney. The political winds are gathering, from Sen. Joe Manchin’s openness to working towards such a plan in Congress to North Dakota’s Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer’s support for carbon border adjustments to sanction China and Russia.
This is not to suggest ease of application with any policy so ambitious. The climate crisis has no easy solutions, but carbon fees and dividends are without big government regulations and the first, best solution that can be quickly implemented.
We have a broad agreement on a policy that can prevent further damage to our climate. We ask our members of Congress to recommit to legislating climate solutions, protecting our communities and leading the global community to join the transition to clean energy.
A healthy, safe climate and the stability of our world are worth fighting for.
Cash Mendenhall
Cash Mendenhall is a sophomore at West High School, Salt Lake City, and an intern for the local chapter of Citizen’s Climate Lobby.