TCI Regional Policy Design Stakeholder Submissions

The climate crisis is the most important issue of our generation, so I have been working most of my life on this, to protect the future for my children and grandchildren. We need to put a price on carbon through a carbon fee and dividend approach (call it a "green energy dividend"). This will provide incentives for clean energy, electric cars, and mass transit in a way that provides dividends to low income people that need it the most. I appreciate your bipartisan dedication to this issue.

Please accept the attached comments regarding forecasting of vehicle-miles traveled in the reference case scenario.

My name is Sabrina Fu and I live in Ellicott City, MD and work as a professor in Environmental Management for UMUC. I am well aware of what fossil fuels has done to our lands, waters, and atmosphere the past few hundred years. As a mother and concerned citizen, I spend a lot of volunteer time asking for policies to price pollution and use markets to quickly transition out of fossil fuels.
Please make sure that the policy has a price high enough to effectively reduce emissions rapidly and incorporate a society equity component to protect rural and low-income people from the increase in transportation prices.
Thank you for your bipartisan commitment in moving our transportation section into 21st century energy sources.

My name is Parvathi Susarla and I live in Bedford, MA. I request that the policy be priced high enough
To effectively reduce carbon emissions and have a strong social equity so that it does not hurt
Any low income families. I appreciate the bipartisan effort on this policy.

Transportation and heating represent the bulk of Vermont’s carbon emissions. To reduce our use of fossil fuels most economists say we need a steadily rising carbon emissions fee (with revenue returned to households). Technology exists now that will allow us to electrify almost all our energy use, including transportation, heating, farming and industry. Most of Vermont”s electricity is already created from wind, water, and solar (and a little bit of cow power). A price signal plus additional incentives will encourage people to make a quick transition to an all-electric, all-renewables world.

The Citizens Climate Lobby is a nonpartisan nonprofit volunteer advocacy group with over 500 grassroots chapters. CCL supports the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, H.R. 763, a market-based solution to climate change that encourages emissions reductions while helping the economy.

Please see:
https://citizensclimatelobby.org/energy-innovation-and-carbon-dividend-act/
for more information and how you can help.

“Most impressive is the work of Citizens’ Climate Lobby…If you want to join the fight to save the planet, to save creation for your grandchildren, there is no more effective step you could take than becoming an active member of this group.” ~ Dr. James Hansen, Climate Scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

My name is Cliff Strawitch and I live in Ellicott City, Maryland. Having witnessed firsthand the devastation caused to historic downtown Ellicott City by two catastrophic floods in less than two years, which science tells us was made worse by climate change, I am highly motivated to demand action to reduce greenhouse gasses. The recent IPCC and National Climate Assessment reports on climate change make the urgency of such action clear. Since fossil fuel combustion by transportation is now the largest source of greenhouse gasses, action to reduce this source is essential.
Based on my readings, I believe the best way to reduce this source of greenhouse gasses is a tax on fossil fuels used for transportation. This carbon tax on fossil fuel combustion received the endorsement in the Wall Street Journal on January 17 of 3554 economists including 27 Nobel laureates, 15 former chairs of the Council of Economic Advisors and 2 former Secretaries of the US Department of the Treasury. This approach has been demonstrated in British Columbia (BC), Canada since 2008 to both be effective and politically popular. Figure 1{1} shows just how effective it was at reducing refined petroleum fuel use and therefore greenhouse gas emissions in BC as compared to the rest of Canada.

Figure 1: reduction is fuel use in BC as compared to the rest of Canada. The vertical line at 2008 marks the introduction of the fuel tax.
All the revenues generated by this tax were returned to the people as a reduction in other taxes. After some initial resistance, the tax became popular due to this tax reduction feature. Starting at $10 per ton of carbon dioxide, the tax rose $5 per year until 2012, and has remained at $30 per ton ever since.{1} The tax had no statistically significant impact on GDP, a testament to its ability to shield business and consumers. British Columbia’s GDP growth was on par with the rest of Canada from 2008-2011, actually performing slightly better than the rest of Canada by 0.1 percent. In addition, numerous studies, for example the REMI study{2} , show that this approach benefits the majority of families, including the most financially vulnerable, since they will receive more from this carbon dividend than they pay for increased fuel costs.
In his recent book{3}, Professor Gilbert Metcalf of Tufts University points out that a Cap and Trade approach often suffers from political and economic forces that tend to drive the value of a carbon permit for a ton of CO¬2 down to values that are simply too low to be effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions as is the case with the current European Emission Trading System{3}. In addition, the price volatility caused by these same forces makes planning very difficult for corporations needing to purchase such permits. A carbon tax suffers from neither of these problems and is therefore in my opinion the best way to address greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.



References
1. “Analyzing British Columbia’s Carbon Tax: by Wharton Public Policy Initiative, October 30, 2016, https://publicpolicy.wharton.upenn.edu/live/news/1520-analyzing-british-columbias-carbon-tax
2. The Economic, Climate, Fiscal, Power, and Demographic Impact of a National Fee-and-Dividend Carbon Tax”, Regional Economic Modeling Inc., June 9, 2014, https://citizensclimatelobby.org/remi-report/
3. “Paying for Pollution: Why a Carbon Tax is Good for America”, Gilbert E. Metcalf, Oxford University Press, 2019

Hello,

As a supporter of Citizens' Climate Lobby, I am thrilled to hear about this bipartisan effort to limit emissions by way of a carbon pricing scheme. As a woman in my thirties, the climate crisis has a huge impact on my life. We are already feeling the effects of climate change in my coastal town, effects that are nothing in comparison with the effects of the sea-level rise we are already locked into thanks to current and past emissions. Climate change's impact on my local environment, on global food production, and world conflict and security issues, among other areas, stand to profoundly effect the rest of my life.

I encourage you to set carbon prices in line with what current science shows would effectively reduce emissions: setting initial rates high enough, increasing the rate over time, and building in a clause to increase prices at a faster rate if emissions reduction targets are not met.

The environmental and economic impacts of climate change already affect lower-income people disproportionately, particularly considering lower-income people consume at a lessor rate, generating fewer emissions. Please build in protections that will enable poorer households to stay afloat and themselves transition to lower-carbon ways of living.

Thank you for your work.
Julia Plumb