For Immediate Release:
January 12, 2016
One Month After Paris: Climate Experts Continue Push for Carbon Taxes
Non-profit that convened letter from 32 notable experts including Nobel prize winners and former cabinet secretaries says carbon taxing is what’s next after COP21
Today marks one month since the landmark Paris climate agreement, where 196 countries agreed for the first time to work to reduce carbon emissions that cause climate change.
As policy makers and the public ask, “what’s next” after Paris, the Carbon Tax Center, a leading solutions-focused nonprofit, issued the following statement, which can be attributed to Director Charles Komanoff:
One month after the COP21 agreement, we are already fighting an uphill battle. Cheap gasoline and political resistance threaten countries’ abilities to meet the goals set out in Paris. Both the global climate and the political climate require policymakers worldwide to move swiftly to tax carbon pollution –– a move that expert scientists and economists agree offers our best chance to avert catastrophic global warming without destabilizing the global economy.
The Carbon Tax Center made headlines last year after it organized a letter to the Paris climate negotiators signed by 32 leading economics and science experts, including 4 Nobel prize winners and 3 former U.S. cabinet secretaries. The signers outlined how world leaders can tackle climate change without undermining economic prosperity or harming the poor.
The bipartisan list includes Steven Chu, Nobel Prize-winning physicist and President Obama’s first Secretary of Energy; Robert Reich, President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor; George P. Shultz, President Nixon’s Secretary of Labor and President Reagan’s Secretary of State; Nobel Prize-winning economists Joseph Stiglitz,Thomas Schelling and Kenneth Arrow; founding Congressional Budget Office Director Alice Rivlin; Greg Mankiw, chair of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers; and Jerry Taylor, president of the Niskanen Center.
Last month, following the Paris agreement, the Carbon Tax Center published an analysis highlighting the climate threat posed by cheap oil, but also released a groundbreaking report underscoring the promise of British Columbia’s revenue-neutral carbon tax.
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The Carbon Tax Center launched in January 2007 to give voice to Americans who believe that taxing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is imperative to combat global warming. CTC is a clearinghouse for research, analysis and advocacy to establish a carbon tax as the centerpiece of U.S. policy to combat catastrophic climate change. It has been the leading NGO advocating for carbon taxing as the key to unlocking low and non-carbon investment and innovation to drive the global energy system away from fossil fuels to renewable wind, sunlight and efficiency.