Push partisan politics to the side to create bipartisan solutions to climate change

Op-Ed by Makenzie Binford & Christopher Bove, Indianapolis Star, March 4, 2023

We are young leaders representing opposing political parties. In the recent midterm elections, we were fighting in opposite trenches to turn out the vote for our respective candidates. However, now that the political dust has settled and divided government has begun, we know our parties must come together and put our country’s interests first.

As we see it, this must include climate change. Climate instability is worsening, and Americans are facing escalating costs from extreme storms and other climate damages. Our generation — which turned out in force in the recent election — will face the brunt of the impacts, which is why young voters consistently rank climate as a top voting issue.

Delivering results on climate change should be a priority for this Congress, and, even in the context of divided government, there is reason for hope. The legislative track record underscores that most legislative successes are, in fact, bipartisan. Since 1985, the majority party has passed high-priority legislation without support from the opposing party a meager 4% of the time. In this sense, bipartisanship isn’t the exception in Congress. It’s the norm.

Climate politics remains politicized, so how can we achieve bipartisanship on this issue?

First, both parties need to embrace compromise. On the liberal side of the aisle, progressive activists must be willing to decouple climate policy from other progressive policy goals and also be open to market-based solutions, as long as they help to reduce emissions. That is the way to bring both parties together around bipartisan and durable solutions.

Conservatives, meanwhile, need to lead with greater ambition on the issue, leave climate denialism behind and put forth concrete and effective solutions. As more leaders in the GOP lean-in on climate, Republicans can’t just say they’re for clean energy innovation without supporting the incentives to induce it. The reality is that society won’t adopt cleaner alternatives at scale because it feels good. The private sector needs clear market signals.

Second, success should be measured by actual emissions reductions. While recent Congressional proposals like the Trillion Trees Act and Civilian Climate Corps Act might spring from noble intentions, they would do little on their own to improve the raw math of emissions. Emphasizing actual reductions — including in key sectors like energy, transportation and industry — will bring into focus what matters most.

To this end, a market-based tool like carbon pricing is vital. This approach would charge fossil fuel companies a fee for their emissions and create a market incentive for businesses to adopt cleaner energy sources like solar, wind and nuclear. In addition, if the revenue from this carbon fee were returned to citizens as direct checks, this would sidestep debates about the size of government and put money back in the pockets of US workers and families.

This approach has earned the backing of thought leaders across the political spectrum, as well as business leaders and environmental experts. It would harness the marketplace to accelerate the transition to clean energy and help deliver a 50% emissions cut by 2030.

Finally, we must spur progress overseas. While it’s true the U.S. has higher emissions per capita, it’s also true that an overwhelming 87% of carbon emissions come from beyond our shores, meaning domestic action can only go so far. A tool known as a pollution import fee — which would charge foreign polluters for their emissions — could bring both parties together and send a clear market signal to lower international emissions.
Republican and Democrat lawmakers alike are gravitating toward this approach, including as a means to hold high-emitting countries like China accountable and bring jobs and manufacturing back to the United States. In this new Congress, this type of solution should be at the top of the agenda. As overall emissions continue to rise and climate impacts intensify, we should double down on finding pathways to climate leadership. In the 118th Congress, we can supercharge recent climate investments, expand energy production in the United States, and lower global emissions, too. 

Especially as our generation continues to vote and prioritize climate action, the mandate to lead on this issue will only strengthen. We can, and must, put aside our differences and ensure a timely response to one of the great challenges of our time. 

Makenzie Binford is the chairwoman of the Indiana Federation of College Republicans. She is a student at Indiana University. 

Christopher Bove is the chairman of the College Democrats of Rhode Island. He is a student at the University of Rhode Island.

https://www.indystar.com/story/opinion/2023/03/04/bipartisan-cooperation-needed-to-resolve-climate-change-in-u-s/69968497007/

Republican Leaders Want to Reinvent the Party’s Climate Image. The Far Right Won’t Let Them

How the GOP approaches climate policy matters, polls show. But a small group of radical conservatives are preventing the party from finding common ground.

By Kristoffer Tigue, Inside Climate News, Feb. 21, 2023

The Republican party has an image issue when it comes to climate change.

For decades, the GOP has consistently pushed back against warnings from the science community that human-caused global warming poses an existential threat to the planet. And while that largely remains the same today—after all, no Republicans voted for President Joe Biden’s flagship climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act—some conservative lawmakers have at least started to recognize global warming as a political threat.

Recent polls have consistently shown that Americans generally view climate change as a serious issue and support policies that address it.

About 70 percent of Americans now believe global warming is occurring, with almost as many saying they’re worried to some degree about the threats it poses to them, according to a December poll conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. A second George Mason University poll that month found that nearly 80 percent of U.S. registered voters support developing renewable energy, such as solar and wind, on public land. That total includes more than half of the survey respondents who identified as conservative Republicans, as opposed to moderate.

Republican leaders have responded to that political landscape in recent years by taking a more measured approach to climate issues. Ahead of the midterm elections, for example, House Republicans unveiled their own climate plan—albeit one that received harsh criticism from environmentalists for its heavy reliance on oil and gas production. And as the GOP ramped up its campaign last year against the Biden

administration’s proposal to require public companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related risks to federal regulators, with some calling it “woke capitalism,” some of the party’s top-ranking members tried to temper that fight by conveying a softer tone.

“I have long recognized the threat climate change poses to communities across America, and thoughtful climate policy—focused on the health and welfare of America’s working class—is long overdue,” wrote North Carolina Rep. Patrick McHenry, the incoming Republican leader of the House Financial Services Committee, in a March press release that criticized the proposed climate disclosure rule.

But as Republican leaders attempt to revamp the party’s climate image, they’re running headlong into resistance from a small but vocal group of far-right lawmakers who are touting extreme views of global warming and making it far more difficult for the GOP to establish a unified platform.

In fact, Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert will help to kick off the Heartland Institute’s 15th annual climate change conference this week, where the event’s prevailing message is that “there is no climate crisis.” Boebert, a GOP firebrand who has made a name for herself by leaning into America’s culture war, was one of 20 far-right lawmakers who initially blocked California Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s election as House Speaker last month in what was arguably the most public display yet of the growing rift within the Republican party.

“Republican members of Congress who attempt to lean in and address climate change in a responsible manner will find a warm embrace by their Democratic colleagues on the Hill, but will also get a cold shoulder or worse from many of their Republican colleagues,” Edward Maibach, director of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication, told me in an email interview. 

“They need to look beyond the hostile members of their own caucus and look to their voters,” added Maibach, who oversees the climate-related polling conducted by George Mason University and Yale. “Our polls show that Republicans who are willing to stand tall for climate action will have a better chance of winning in their general election because large majorities of voters favor climate action.”

Boebert’s participation in Heartland’s summit this week, however, could make it harder for more centrist Republicans like McHenry to pursue that course of action. The free-market think tank’s close ties to former President Donald Trump only highlights the ongoing infighting over who will represent the Republican party in the 2024 presidential election. The Heartland Institute also has a long history of spreading misleading and false claims about global warming and is widely viewed by climate advocates as a disinformation machine.

The group was responsible for launching then-German teenager Naomi Seibt into the international spotlight in 2020. Seibt, who was 19 years old at the time, billed herself as a grassroots “climate skeptic,” prompting some to dub her the “anti-Greta”—a counterweight to the rising popularity of Swedish youth climate activist Greta Thunberg. Considering Seibt was found to be on the Heartland Institute’s payroll, however, many in the climate movement quickly dismissed her claims of coming from humble grassroots beginnings.

Earlier this month, the organization sent copies of its book, “Climate at a Glance,” to 8,000 middle and high school teachers across the country, saying it was providing the schools with “the data to show the Earth is not experiencing a climate crisis.”

The book was the second attempt by the group to influence public school science education since at least 2017 and contained highly misleading statements such as “sea levels have been rising at a fairly steady pace since at least the mid-1800s.” A closer look at the data shows that the rate of sea-level rise has more than doubled in the 2000s when compared to most of the 20th century.

“It’s a misleading interpretation of scientific facts and questionable inferences drawn from cherry picked data from unreliable sources,” Robert Brulle, a visiting professor of sociology at Brown University who has researched the public relations strategies of the fossil fuel industry, told Grist. “It almost seems quaint that they’re still running with this. It’s like ‘The 1990s called. They want their scientific misinformation back.’”

https://insideclimatenews.org/todaysclimate/republicans-far-right-climate-change/?utm_source=InsideClimate+News&utm_campaign=8079751928-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_02_25_05_00&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_29c928ffb5-8079751928-329499109

How to Make Climate Change a Bipartisan Priority

The environmental movement needs to invest in political infrastructure on the right.

Op-ed By Francis Rooney & Ryan Costello, Politico, Feb. 14, 2023

As a divided Congress gets underway, the environmental movement must confront a fundamental, and perhaps uncomfortable, reality: The U.S. will not be able to successfully address climate change without bipartisanship.

This is not to discount last year’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which Democrats squeezed through Congress without any GOP votes. However, there is still much work to do on climate and likely a decade’s wait, or longer, until Democrats again secure unified control of government. In the last half century, neither party has recaptured full control of Washington, after losing it, in fewer than 10 years. In the post-World War II period, the average time it has taken is 14 years. At this pace, it will be 2033, 2035, or 2037 before Democrats again hold the House, Senate and White House.

We simply cannot wait that long to pass additional climate legislation. The stakes are too high and the time is too short, especially in light of increasingly frequent and visible climate impacts. So relying exclusively on Democrats for continued climate progress would be a strategic blunder. Bipartisanship is the only assured path to decarbonizing at scale and speed.

Despite this reality, the climate movement has done far too little to lay the groundwork for bipartisan action. For years, philanthropists have poured money into progressive climate groups, while largely overlooking opportunities to engage right-of-center communities on this topic. The data bear this out. According to an analysis by Northeastern University, less than 2 percent of climate philanthropy has gone to engaging conservatives on climate change. On a very practical level, this imbalance misses an opportunity to build a broader tent and delays the elevation of climate as a bipartisan priority.

As former GOP congressmen eager to see further movement on climate, we know firsthand how difficult it can be to mobilize Republicans on this issue. Some of the blame lies within our own party, which has been too skeptical on climate action for too long. But without real engagement from the environmental movement, it becomes easy for our Republican colleagues to dismiss the issue as a liberal concern rather than a challenge confronting us all.

In its work on climate change, the Democratic Party is guided by a formidable civil society apparatus — including think tanks, grassroots organizations and more — that pushes, pulls and applauds Democrats as they act on this issue.

There is little equivalent on the right. The small assemblage of organizations that make up the “eco-right,” while growing, receive only a fraction of the funding that left-of-center groups do. If environmental leaders are genuinely committed to emboldening bipartisan action in support of increasingly ambitious policy, this must change. Far more resources need to be invested in building the kind of infrastructure that can rally conservatives to climate action.

Already, advocacy by the eco-right has demonstrated its ability to move the political needle. Just in the last few years, dozens of Republicans have joined the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucuses in both chambers of Congress; the newly formed Conservative Climate Caucus in the House now includes a third of the GOP conference.

These efforts have also produced concrete legislation, including the bipartisan Growing Climate Solutions Act, which passed the Senate with 92 votes. Several other bills, including the Financing Our Energy Future Act, Restoring Resilient Reefs Act, Protecting and Securing Florida’s Coastline Act, and National Climate Adaptation and Resilience Strategy Act, have also garnered bipartisan support.

The Energy Act of 2020, which earned strong support from both parties, directs the EPA to reduce HFC gasses 85 percent by 2035. This measure will help limit global warming by a full half of a degree Celsius — one of the most significant climate actions in history. Additionally, the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in the last Congress includes an array of low carbon and clean energy measures.

There are meaningful, bipartisan victories to be achieved for those who seek them. This requires an openness to market-based solutions and a deeper commitment to climate engagement across the political spectrum.

Especially as philanthropic commitments to address climate change grow — including a new initiative announced this year at Davos — right-of-center climate engagement must be a core part of the portfolio.

One important place to start is in red states, where climate organizing, especially by trusted messengers, has paled in comparison to the vigor and energy of advocacy in blue states. At the end of the day, lawmakers are responsive to the voters in their own states and districts. Only with a greater mandate to lead, in Republican and Democratic districts alike, can we create the conditions necessary for bipartisan action on Capitol Hill.

While climate change is a unique and paramount challenge, the laws of political gravity remain the same. Legislative outcomes are born from the political infrastructure supporting them. If bipartisan climate solutions are our goal, then we must build toward them.

From the nexus of climate and trade to pollution pricing to natural climate solutions, there are many promising areas for bipartisan progress. But unless the environmental community embraces this mandate, and dedicates resources and attention accordingly, we will fail to meet the responsibilities of our moment in history.

This is the environmental movement’s vulnerability, but also its opportunity. Building bipartisan routes forward on climate won’t be easy. But it is the work that can, and must, be done.

Ryan Costello, a Republican from Pennsylvania, served in the House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019 and was a member of the Climate Solutions Caucus.

Francis Rooney, a Republican from Florida, served in the House of Representatives from 2017 to 2021 and was the co-chair of the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/02/14/environmental-movement-climate-change-bipartisanship-00082575

Floating ice around Antarctica just hit a record low

The record could be a hint that Antarctic sea ice is finally starting to behave as expected as the planet warms.

By Chris Mooney, The Washington Post, Feb. 14, 2023

The amount of floating sea ice encircling Antarctica reached the lowest level ever recorded, scientists reported Tuesday, a sign that one of the most remote and mysterious facets of the climate system may, at last, be responding to the overall planetary warming trend.

The latest measurements represent the lowest reading for overall Antarctic sea ice extent since satellite monitoring began in late 1978. This marks the second year in a row that, as the Antarctic summer wears on and the Southern Ocean’s blanket of sea ice shrinks to its yearly minimum extent, a record low has been recorded.

The extent of ice around Antarctica dwindled to roughly 737,000 square miles as of Feb. 13, based on data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado; it measured roughly 741,000 square miles during the previous low, on Feb. 25, 2022.

The ice is likely to decline even further throughout much of February, before beginning its seasonal climb as summer ends in the Antarctic.

“This will not just be a ‘barely made it’ record, it is looking like it will be another substantial jump downward on top of last year’s record,” said Ted Scambos, an expert on sea ice and glaciers at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Scambos and other scientists determine sea ice extent at both poles from satellite data, and their figures count all areas where there is at least a 15 percent concentration of floating sea ice. Because individual daily readings can jump up and down, researchers use a five day average of the satellite data to assess whether a record has been broken.

Separately, a research group based in Germany called the Sea Ice Portal, which includes scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute and other institutions, declared Friday that a record low had occurred for summer Antarctic sea ice.

The back-to-back record lows could begin to reassure scientists that Antarctic sea ice is finally starting to behave as expected as the planet warms.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) also announced Tuesday that global sea ice reached a record low in January, driven in large part by diminished Antarctic ice.

In the Arctic, the downtrend in the extent of floating sea ice has been clear and pronounced since the late 1970s. Based on annual averages of the ice’s extent, the Arctic has lost a little over 20,000 square miles of ice per year since 1979.

In the Antarctic, no clear downtrend in overall sea ice extent has yet emerged. It has even appeared as if ice extent might be rising slightly — despite general expectations that a warmer Earth should feature less ice at both poles.

During the Southern Hemisphere winter of 2014, Antarctic sea ice actually grew to a record high of more than 7,782,275 square miles. The record set off massive chatter about the Antarctic’s apparent thwarting of climate predictions.

But scientists have cautioned that there are many differences between the Arctic and Antarctic, and our satellite records are still relatively short — meaning that Antarctic declines could manifest themselves soon enough.

In the Arctic, the pole is covered by an ocean overlain by ice that spreads outward, but soon encounters and freezes onto land masses including the coasts of Alaska, Russia and Canada’s Arctic Islands.

In the Antarctic, the pole is covered by a vast landmass. It is only at its edge, beyond the Antarctic glaciers and their great floating ice shelves, that thinner sea ice forms. Once the ice grows outward, it encounters no hindrances in the vast Southern Ocean, and eventually extends for hundreds of miles. It is usually thinner than sea ice in the Arctic.

Antarctic ice also declines more steeply when summer comes. The floating ice climbs to an annual peak of more than 7 million square miles in September — but then subtracts an area nearly the size of Russia by the following February. In the each of the last two years, the minimal extent has fallen well under 1 million square miles.

Scientists say that these vast seasonal swings have made it tough to detect trends in the Antarctic. But with two record lows for Antarctic ice in 2022 and 2023 — and before that a record low in 2017 — it could be that a signal is beginning to emerge, at least in the summer.

If so, that also could make some physical sense — recent research has suggested that the broad warming of the planet’s oceans is now reaching the Antarctic, and affecting trends in sea ice.

“The level of Antarctic sea ice variability exhibited in 2016-2017 (extreme sea ice low), 2021-2022 (extreme sea ice low), 2023 (extreme sea ice low) is unprecedented in the satellite record and might signal a change in the Antarctic sea ice regime as a response to anthropogenic warming,” said Liping Zhang, a researcher at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at NOAA, who has studied how warming oceans could be affecting the ice.

“However, further data and analysis are required to evaluate and verify any claims for a changing Antarctic climate,” Zhang cautioned.

Scientists with the National Snow and Ice Data Center, which provides the data, also sounded a cautionary note in their announcement.

“Antarctic sea ice extent has been highly variable over the last several years,” they noted. “While 2022 and 2023 have had record low minimum extent, four out of the five highest minimums have occurred since 2008.”

The significance of a decline in Antarctic sea ice, if it begins to emerge more clearly, would be different in some ways than for the Arctic.

At the top of Earth, Arctic sea ice is a main player in a crucial feedback that determines how much, and how rapidly, the Earth warms. Every time an area of ice melts and gets swapped out for an area of ocean, the Arctic absorbs more solar heat (because bright ice reflects much more radiation than dark ocean does). This unleashes a feedback in which warming shrinks sea ice, which enhances warming — one that is already afoot.

In the Antarctic, loss of sea ice also affects Earth’s reflectivity. But it has other, different potential consequences. One of them, Scambos said, could be exposing the great Antarctic ice shelves to more pounding by waves — which in turn, if those shelves have already been weakened by surface melting or warm ocean waters underneath, could further destabilize them.

Antarctic ice shelves are the seaward extension of the world’s largest army of glaciers, and provide a stabilizing function. If damaged or lost, glaciers will flow faster and sea levels will rise more rapidly.

Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center said the steep recent drop in sea ice around Antarctica has driven research on its potential causes and “whether sea ice loss in the Southern Hemisphere is developing a significant downward trend.”

Naema Ahmed contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/02/14/antarctic-sea-ice-record-low/

Carbon Tax

Policy 360 Podcast, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, Jan. 20, 2023

CO2 emissions play a major role in climate change. Guest host and J.D./UPEP doctoral candidate Gabriela Nagle Alverio speaks with Sanford Professor and Interim Director of the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability Brian Murray about different carbon tax approaches and their pros and cons for curbing emissions.

Guest:

Brian Murray: Interim Director of the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability, Research Professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy, and at the Nicholas School of the Environment

This is the third in a series of conversations about climate change.

Conversation Highlights

Responses have been edited for clarity.

Brian Murray on the definition of a carbon tax:

Carbon pricing is effectively putting a unit price on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are emitted into the atmosphere or in some cases as they’re removed from the atmosphere. The basic premise is it provides an economic incentive to reduce those emissions because currently they are untraced, so they’re treated as free. And when it’s free to emit greenhouse gases, we’re not incentivized to reduce those emissions.

 Brian Murray on emissions trading programs:

Another approach is called cap-and-trade or emissions trading. In a cap-and-trade program, the government issues a fixed number of permits, but they allow those permits to be sold in a market. So, if I need more permits to issue more greenhouse gases, I need to buy them from somebody else who’s able to reduce their greenhouse gases so that they won’t need the permit. It creates forces of supply and demand, which then creates a market price for emissions permits. And it’s that price that provides the same kind of economic signal to reduce emissions as a carbon tax.

Brian Murray on the Inflation Reduction Act:

The Inflation Reduction Act was just passed in August, much to the surprise of just about everyone I know, including people who work in the administration. It’s massive in terms of relative scale to any other climate policy. It’s mostly about energy – low carbon energy or zero carbon energy.

Brian Murray on the Duke Climate Commitment:

The new Duke Climate Commitment aims to deploy all aspects of the university’s mission: education, research, engagement, public service, campus operations and community partnerships, in pursuit of sustainable and equitable solutions to climate change. Climate change is a wicked challenge, but it’s a necessary challenge. It is among the most significant challenges of our time.

We are trying to train people to have climate fluency so they can be change-makers when they’re here on campus, but also soon after they leave campus. We educate students, but we also have a lifetime commitment to our alumni and to other partners of this university. We have a lot of exciting programs that we are developing right now to work with all these populations.

• Read the conversation transcript.

• Find out more about the Duke Climate Commitment.

https://policy360.org/2023/01/20/ep-142-carbo-tax/

Dancing around the obvious climate solution

Op-ed by Bob Inglis, The Hill, Jan. 10, 2023

There’s a lot of dancing around a carbon tax as the obvious solution to climate change. What’s lacking is the confidence to go all in. If we had the confidence of a self-governing people, the steps would be obvious: untax payroll; tax carbon dioxide instead; apply the tax to imports; cause the world to follow our lead.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) has penciled the idea on a dance card. He pointed out in that lengthy interview last month with the Washington Post that a border-adjusted carbon tax is the most powerful way to reduce worldwide emissions. That’s because trading partners would find it in their interest to skip a U.S. “border-adjustment” by implementing their own carbon tax. If so, the cost of CO2 would become visible to 8 billion people. Dirty products would be more expensive relative to clean ones, and accountable free enterprise would deliver innovation quickly.

Romney pointed out that Democrats could have enacted a carbon tax through the reconciliation process. They didn’t. Instead, they gave us the Inflation Reduction Act—a collection of tax credits that will drive clean energy innovation in America but likely fail to spur worldwide innovation. (American tax credits don’t incentivize foreign firms. Tax credits affect a firm’s decision to deploy clean energy only if it pays American taxes.)

A Democrat would be right to complain, though, that Republicans haven’t exactly stepped out onto the dance floor of the middle school gymnasium. Rather, Republicans seem to be standing on the walls of the gym, snickering about the history lessons of the 1994 midterm elections. Back then, Democrats lost control of the House, perhaps in part because of Al Gore’s BTU tax (British Thermal Unit tax).

Critics are right to point out that a BTU tax or a carbon tax would raise the price of nearly everything that we buy. That’s terrible policy and worse politics.

But what if we paired a carbon tax with a cut in payroll (F.I.C.A.) taxes, exercising the right of self-governing people to change what we tax? Such a tax swap requires trust, and that trust will come only if Republicans and Democrats work together.

The incoming Congress will have two opportunities to build that trust—in themselves and in their constituencies.  

First, Congress can work on bipartisan permitting reform. The clean energy that’s going to be created because of the IRA tax credits for nuclear, hydrogen, wind and solar energy will need to get to population centers. That means powerlines and, yes, pipelines—for natural gas, for hydrogen and for captured CO2. We need more copper and lithium and cobalt and nickel. That means mines. Our EVs don’t drop down from heaven like manna. Somebody’s got to get busy and make the materials for us. If we do it right, we can make those materials without fouling our air and water. But let’s be clear minded; there are going to be impacts on our landscapes. It’s a fallen world, and we have to make tradeoffs.

Second, Congress can anticipate the European Union’s enactment of a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM). American companies selling certain commodities to Europe are going to have to pay a carbon tax when their products land in European ports. That’s a tax that we could collect ourselves. If we did, those products would enter Europe without adjustment. The carbon tax revenue would be here, not there. And it would make no difference to the American exporter’s customers because the carbon tax is going to be built into the price of the product either way.

Thankfully, Republicans like Sen. Kevin Cramer (N.D.) are stepping forward with a somewhat parallel proposal for a carbon tariff. He would have the U.S. collect a tariff on Chinese steel, for example, to account for their heavy CO2 emissions. Cramer argues that our existing clean air regulations are equivalent to a domestic carbon tax. Perhaps the World Trade Organization would agree with Cramer, but even if they don’t, he’s much to be congratulated for starting toward the dance floor.

Our ability to govern ourselves is at the heart of who we are as Americans. We can decide to untax some form of income, to put a tax on carbon dioxide instead and to apply that tax to imports. That would get the world “in” on solving climate change, and accountable free enterprise would deliver innovation at scale and fast.

Rep. Bob Inglis represented South Carolina in Congress from 1993-1999 and 2005-2011. He is the executive director of republicEn.org, a growing group of conservatives who care about climate change.

https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/3807530-dancing-around-the-obvious-climate-solution/