Here we cross-post my article published in The Nation magazine this morning, under the headline, Progressives Need to Get Over Themselves and Support This GOP-Backed Carbon-Tax Plan. Except for a few extra links below, the two versions are the same.

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  — Charles

Carbon tax haters can relax. The proposal for a national carbon tax released on February 8 by high-level Republicans, including uber-GOP consigliere James Baker, isn’t going anywhere. Financially and ideologically, the American right is wedded to carbon fuels. Trumpism runs on and reeks of them. Predictably, not a single Republican in Congress, and no one in the White House, has uttered a single positive word about the new carbon tax plan.

Nevertheless, the proposal’s intended audience may not be Beltway Republicans, but rather those ordinary Americans, majorities in both parties, who say they want action on climate, and who therefore might yet figure in the political equation over climate policy. That group includes progressives. We should pay attention: Carbon taxes matter.

Our long-building climate crisis is already materializing as drowned coasts, punishing droughts, vanishing glaciers—and political upheaval. At its root is a century-old lie: market prices for gasoline and other fossil fuels that do not factor in the damage from burning them.

A clean energy revolution is at last underway, with wind power, solar electricity, and energy efficiency becoming not only cheaper by the day, but easier to deploy. Still, the clean energy transition will be slowed until prices of coal, oil, and gas reflect their true environmental costs. A carbon tax could do that, if designed properly.

How carbon taxes work is simple enough, at least in theory. Fuel use is infinitely varied and intricately woven into society in ways that regulations such as auto mileage standards can’t fully reach. Clear price signals, on the other hand, can be a nearly magic wand to help billions of invisible hands rapidly reduce and replace fossil fuels.

But with a carbon tax come difficult choices about the vast revenue it will generate. Carbon taxing had a test run at the ballot box last November in the state of Washington, and it ended badly.

On November 8, voters in the Evergreen State rejected by a nearly 3-to-2 margin what would have been the nation’s first statewide carbon tax. A win for “Initiative 732” would have given the United States a carbon tax beachhead, like Canada’s British Columbia, which has had a small but successful carbon tax since 2008.

Remarkably, the decisive factor in defeating I-732 may not have been money from big carbon or even popular aversion to higher taxes, since the initiative was tailored to keep Washingtonians’ tax burden unchanged. What doomed I-732 was a fissure within the climate movement, with centrist economists and other policy wonks in favor of the initiative and progressive greens opposed.

Stated briefly, climate activists in Washington split over opposing answers to two key questions: What are carbon taxes for, and who gets to design them?

Carbon taxes can cut emissions in two ways. As noted above, they raise the price of carbon fuels, thereby worsening their competitive position vis-à-vis cleaner fuels. In addition, the tax revenues raised by a carbon tax can be invested in clean energy infrastructure such as public transit and community solar.

The first path—the “price pull” of boosting market prices of carbon fuels—is what dazzles economists. The second route—the “revenue push” of investing in green infrastructure—appeals to many ordinary folks, especially on the left. Some progressives actively distrust policies that lean hard on price signals, partly for fear that workers in dirty industries will be penalized as investment migrates to cleaner alternatives.

For decades, reactionary forces in the US have been able to block seemingly every new public endeavor by labeling it tax-and-spend. The Washington state carbon tax proponents believed they had an antidote: don’t allow the government to spend the revenues from the carbon tax; rather, use those revenues to reduce other taxes. The political assumption seemed to be that going “revenue-neutral,” though it might frustrate the left—bye-bye public investment—could placate the right or at least capture the center. And so Carbon WA, as the advocates of I-732 called themselves, fashioned its ballot initiative around cuts to the state’s regressive sales tax.

Progressive greens recoiled. The Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy, a state umbrella group of environmental justice organizations and mainstream allies, blasted I-732 for starving green jobs and ignoring frontline communities. So did nationally prominent progressive leaders like Naomi Klein and Van Jones. The measure’s electoral chances, which were never good, could not withstand this split. On election day, as Hillary Clinton was besting Trump in Washington state by half-a-million votes, the carbon tax was rejected, 59 percent to 41 percent.

But progressives can’t just walk away from carbon taxes. Carbon taxes are the only policy tool that, by slashing demand in a rapid, predictable way, divests our economy from fossil fuels and enables governments, business and consumers to make investments in the transition to clean energy. Carbon taxes also have the best chance of catching fire globally.

The carbon tax James Baker brought to the Trump White House on February 8 on behalf of the new Climate Leadership Council has a lot in common with I-732: the Council’s proposal is also avowedly revenue-neutral. But rather than lowering an existing tax, it relies on a so-called tax-and-dividend model: as the state of Alaska does with oil revenues, revenues from the Council’s national carbon tax would be returned equally to all American households in quarterly “dividends” digitally deposited in Social Security accounts. The tax would start at $40 per ton of carbon dioxide.

Earmarking all of the revenue to these dividends creates the political will to raise the tax every year, since the dividends rise in tandem with the tax rate. Ramping up the tax by $5 a year would shrink the use of carbon fuels so drastically that, by my calculations, US carbon emissions in 2030 would be 40 percent less than they were in 2005 (a standard baseline year).

Yet this progress comes with a catch. The Council would phase out much of the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory authority over greenhouse gases and would outright repeal President Obama’s Clean Power Plan to cut emissions from electricity generation. It would also immunize fossil fuel companies from lawsuits for damages done by their products—lawsuits such as those bound to arise from the revelations that ExxonMobil and other companies knew for decades about the climate damages their products cause, and lied about it.

But government policy revolves around trade-offs, and on balance the Council’s carbon tax is worth supporting. After all, well over 80 percent of the Clean Power Plan’s targeted reductions for 2030 were already achieved by the end of 2016. Thus trading away the Clean Power Plan for a tax that could scour fossil fuels from the entire economy is like swapping an aging ballplayer for the next superstar.

Of course, not everyone will see it that way, particularly traditional green groups that helped write the laws and regulations that cleaned up the nation’s air and water. Some will regard the Council’s trade as a ploy to undo the EPA’s authority to protect not just climate—where it may be largely ineffectual anyway—but public health.

With Republicans tightly lashed to climate denial, the value of Baker’s carbon tax proposal may be less as a gateway to legislation and more as a spur for progressives and other citizens to take a clear look at carbon pricing.

Will progressives trust the verdict of economists that a revenue-neutral carbon tax can drive the energy transition so long as the tax level is high enough? Or do we support carbon taxes only if the revenues are invested in the clean energy transition? If so, how do we craft a spending program that reconciles the claims of competing interests? And what is our blueprint for building political power to enact such a carbon tax, when “tax” remains a dirty word in national politics?

Clear majorities of Americans want climate action. Remarkably, some polls have even found that majorities of Americans support carbon taxes like the Climate Leadership Council’s proposal. With the Democrats’ national defeats last November, the failure of climate activists to unite on the Washington state referendum is looking like an unforced error of cruel proportions. We can’t afford to repeat that mistake at the national level.

February 8, 2017, 9:30 a.m. • For Immediate Release

The Carbon Tax Center voiced strong support this morning for a proposal by the Climate Leadership Council to enact a comprehensive nationwide carbon tax starting at $40 per ton of carbon dioxide and rising over time.

The Council is scheduled to release its proposal, “The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends,” at the National Press Club this morning, Wednesday, Feb. 8, at 9:30 a.m.

A $40 per ton tax on carbon pollution starting in 2018 and rising thereafter by $5 per ton each year would, by 2030, reduce annual U.S. CO2 emissions from levels in 2005 (a common baseline year) by an estimated 2.3 billion metric tons, a 40 percent reduction.

Alternatively, measured against a moving “business as usual” trajectory with no national carbon price, the 2030 reductions would be 1.4 billion metric tons a year, or nearly 30 percent of unpriced emissions projected for that year.

(The Council’s proposal envisions that “A sensible carbon tax might begin at $40 a ton and increase steadily over time.” We chose $5/ton as a politically palatable annual rate of increase, and modeled such a tax using our carbon tax model.)

“The robust carbon tax proposed by the Climate Leadership Council would vault the U.S. from the middle to the head of the global pack in reducing heat-trapping, climate-damaging emissions,” said Carbon Tax Center director Charles Komanoff. “It would also provide a template for other nations to follow, creating a real possibility of keeping the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Centigrade or less,” Komanoff said.

Using CTC’s model, Komanoff calculated that the future emissions reduction rate with the Council’s carbon tax would surpass by 50 percent the actual reduction rate since 2005, “a major achievement,” he said, “given that the past reductions were largely enabled by eliminating much coal-burning – the lowest-hanging fruit in eliminating carbon.”

CTC also endorsed the political “swap” in the Council’s proposal to rescind the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. “The important work of the Clean Power Plan was largely completed anyway,” said Komanoff, pointing out that well over 80 percent of the plan’s targeted reduction in electricity-sector emissions for 2030 had already been achieved by the end of 2016. “The proposed carbon tax is the logical and necessary next step,” he said, “instilling incentives throughout the U.S. economy to replace fossil fuels with clean energy.”

CTC further endorsed the Council’s proposal to “dividend” the carbon tax revenues to U.S. households on a quarterly basis. “We’ve studied ‘fee-and-dividend’ for years, and can vouch that it’s the most equitable, least bureaucratic and least corruptible way to distribute the hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue from a carbon tax, while also generating jobs,” Komanoff said.

Komanoff sounded a cautionary note about the dogged resistance of Congressional Republicans to climate action, but added that the Council’s proposal hits all the right marks for a business-friendly, small-government climate policy. “Republicans looking for a way out of their denialist, obstructionist stance on climate have been handed a lifeline,” he said. “Their children and grandchildren are counting on them.”

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About CTC: Since 2007, the Carbon Tax Center has stood at the front lines of the struggle for a sustainable climate and a habitable Earth. Our mission: to generate support to enact a transparent and equitable U.S. carbon pollution tax as quickly as possible — one that rises briskly enough to catalyze virtual elimination of U.S. fossil fuel use within several decades and provides a template and impetus for other nations to follow suit.

Think global, act local. I had that seventies slogan in mind last Sunday morning, at home in lower Manhattan. The pro-immigration rally in Battery Park was a few hours away, the sun was shining, and I walked around the corner to meet up with Erik Torkells, editor of the neighborhood blog, Tribeca Citizen.

Erik had a bag-snagger — a telescoping grappling hook for pulling plastic bags off tree limbs. Like many New Yorkers, he can’t abide the bags and other gossamer debris stuck, like tumors, to our half-a-million street trees. The contraption cost 400 bucks, and when he drew it from its canvas bag I could see why: it had four extenders, a fancy clamp or two, and a fearsome business-end worthy of a stevedore.

Bag snagging, I quickly learned, is serious business. Time-consuming, too. Over the next hour-and-a-half, and even with a big assist from my pal Rachel, who was passing by and gamely joined our little crew, Erik and I could only untangle a few dozen derelict bags from as many trees. And sad to say, we snapped a few spindly tree limbs in the process. (After we posted this, Erik put up a detailed account, Adventures in Bag Snagging; it’s obsessively terrific.)

If only there were a way to keep the bags out of the trees in the first place!

There is, of course, and that’s the main reason I went bag-snagging on Sunday, and why I’ve posted this piece as a Carbon Tax Center blog.

Beginning in February, a NYC local law enacted last spring — Local Law 63 of 2016 — will attach a nickel fee to carryout bags dispensed at supermarkets, grocery and convenience stores, and pharmacies. Shoppers who bring their own bags with them are of course exempt from the charge. Similar fees in dozens of U.S. cities, including San Jose, CA and Washington, DC, have curbed distribution of store bags by over two-thirds, reducing bag litter in gutters, streams and, yes, trees, and saving municipalities millions in trash collection and disposal.

Here in New York, however, implementation of the law was suspended to allow time for, er, more arguing. And now a last-ditch effort to pre-empt the law threatens to undo it before it can get started.

The connection to carbon taxing isn’t so much the petroleum waste from single-use bags, as the principle of charging a fee to encourage efficiency and conservation. To opponents, the fee smacks of punishment. To supporters, it’s a simple prod to finally do what our counterparts in Europe have been doing without grumbling for a century: keep a string or cloth bag with you to stick the groceries in.

In a way, the bag fee fight is the carbon tax struggle stripped to its essence: both policies internalize some of the cost of the harm in its price to incentivize less use. If anything, the bag fee is even more of a no-brainer. There’s no demonstrable burden on the poor. (The NYC law exempts food-stamp users.) There are no shut coal-mines to fret over, no analog to the low-wage worker forced to drive hours each day between two jobs. “You say you use twenty bags a week? Fine, bring your own!”

Sadly, that logic hasn’t worked on a handful of legislators. Perhaps they can’t make the imaginative leap to picture the simple but permanent behavior change. Or maybe they look upon the bag fee as an affront. Either way, the anti-fee forces might actually carry the day. Their repeal bill has cleared the NY State Senate, and now only the Assembly and the Governor stand in the way.

Why fight for the fee when a megalomaniacal demagogue in the White House is persecuting immigrants, refugees and Muslims and preparing to blow up the Paris climate accord? That one’s simple. The battles aren’t either-or, they’re both-and. We can progress on multiple fronts. Later that Sunday, my wife and I rallied with over 10,000 other New Yorkers in Battery Park, against the new administration.

Earlier this month, the New York Times asked Jennie Romer, the activist founder of Plastic Bag Laws, to comment on the rollback effort in Albany. “It seemed to be a very simple incremental policy to make real environmental change,” she told the Times. “And it has turned out to be an incredibly difficult fight.”

Yes, even seemingly incremental progress can be hard as hell. Still, we don’t stop.

If you’re a New York State resident, click here to find your Assemblymember’s contact info.

Bag-snagging photos by Erik Torkells.

Did you march on Saturday? Well over 3 million people did in 500 cities across the U.S., according to the meticulous list compiled by Professors Jeremy Pressman ( U-Conn.) and Erica Chenoweth (University of Denver). A quarter of a million in Chicago. Two hundred thousand in Denver. Twenty thousand in Houston. As many as 750,000 in Los Angeles. Fifteen to twenty thousand in Nashville, and an equal amount in tiny Montpelier, VT. Four hundred thousand in my New York City. Plus another quarter of a million in dozens of countries from Morocco to Mexico.

The resistance to what one observer has labeled “a thin-skinned authoritarian whose only real constituent is himself, and whose intentions, to the extent we can discern them, are to destroy a lot of the things that make this country (truly) great,” has begun with what may have been the largest nationwide explosion of protest in American history.

And, to borrow from our 16th president, “it is altogether fitting and proper” that this new wave of protest was conceived, organized and stamped by women. At the risk of over-generalizing, women incline more than men toward co-operation, mutuality, and inclusivity — attributes that are central to society and survival but are anathema to No. 45.

To quote from the Women’s March Web site:

We stand together in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families – recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country… This march is the first step towards unifying our communities, grounded in new relationships, to create change from the grassroots level up… We work peacefully while recognizing there is no true peace without justice and equity for all.

Like most protests, the Women’s Marches had three purposes: for the country and world, including the media, to send a message; for the marchers, to fortify commitment; and for the marchers as well, to instill the belief that we are not alone and that together we can make a difference. From what I saw and felt in New York, and likewise my wife and son in DC and our other son in St. Paul, MN, the women’s marches succeeded brilliantly on all counts.

For once, the multiplicity of causes distilled in tens of thousands of homemade signs didn’t dilute the point — it was the point. Tolerance, diversity and difference — the essence of society and nature alike — are now under attack in America as perhaps never before. And of course science, fact and truth. While it was good to see the occasional “Time to Price Carbon” sign, it was appropriate that climate was just one of hundreds of concerns expressed at the rallies.

(And of course the People’s Climate Mobilization — what 350.org is calling “the launch pad for a larger, nationwide movement to fight fossil fuels at the local level” — is just 14 weeks away, on April 29. Click here to participate and organize.)

If the marchers’ joy and solidarity were stirring counterpoint to the brutalism of the swearing-in of the new regime, I experienced a similarly stark contrast on Inauguration Day. My wife engineered the near-miracle of procuring three tickets to the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African-American History and Culture, and with our son we spent the afternoon there, sheltered from the events unfolding around us in real time.

We spent most of our time in two of the history galleries: Slavery and Freedom 1400-1877, and Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom: The Era of Segregation 1876-1968. This isn’t the venue, nor am I the vehicle, for a full account of the richness of the experience. (For that, I suggest Holland Cotter’s review, The Smithsonian African American Museum Is Here At Last: And It Uplifts and Upsets, and Wesley Morris’s essay, Visiting the African-American Museum: Waiting, Reading, Thinking, Connecting, Feeling, both in the New York Times.)

What I can report is how my immersion at the “Blacksonian” on Friday deepened my understanding of the mercantile nature of slavery. Panels reporting the ship names, flag, voyage dates, and number of slaves who were boarded in Africa and survived the Middle Passage to the Americas drove home with brutal force not just slavery’s vast scope but the web of contractual and monetary arrangements that undergirded it. “Money money money money money” I whispered to my wife as we gazed at these impassive testaments to greed and suffering. Slavery made white America rich.

As we made our way through the Freedom floor, we saw the promises of emancipation yanked away by the KKK, lynchings and Jim Crow. But the exhibits also told of W.E.B. Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph, and of course the Civil Rights Movement. The story of freedom in America is the story of struggle.

Campaigners for justice have always battled tall odds. I wrote on Nov. 10 that “fighting for a livable planet and a humane society is what I’ve done my whole life. I’m not stopping now, and I know neither are you.” The massive rejection of Trump and the calls for resistance that sounded through the land on Saturday demonstrate without doubt that we’re a movement of millions.

Photographs by the author.