Letter: Sustainable energy would ‘boost’ economy
The Washington Post
recently reported that the Global Carbon Project, headed by Rob Jackson, a scientist at Stanford, predicts an increase of greenhouse gas emission of about two percent for 2017. Scientists warn that we need to act quickly in order to curb climate change. The world’s oceans are warming, fueling intense storms, destroying coral reefs and stressing the marine food chain.
The oceans store a lot of the carbon dioxide we emit, but this causes acidification further threatening the marine food chain. It is time to act. Both the Climate Leadership Council and the Citizen’s Climate Lobby have strongly suggested Congress adopt a revenue neutral carbon fee and dividend policy where a tax is imposed on fossil fuels at the source, but the fees collected are returned to households in the form of a dividend. Politicians are reluctant to act because it may hurt the economy. Well, don’t extremely intense storms hurt the economy and won’t a decrease in the productivity of ocean fisheries hurt the economy? Also, studies have indicated that a transition to sustainable energy would actually boost the economy.
Finally, the rest of the industrialized world is taking action, so where is our leadership?