Action Sheet for November 2015
CCL Monthly Conference Call, Saturday, November 7, 2015
Groups meet at 9:45am PT/12:45pm ET
The international conference call starts at 10:00 am PT/1:00 pm ET
The conference call part of the meeting is just under an hour long, and groups
meet for another hour after that to take and plan actions.
Call-in number: 1-866-642-1665, passcode: 440699#
Callers outside U.S. and Canada, please use Skype: 719-387-8317, passcode 440699#
Rob Williams, Resources for the Future
Our guest for the November call is Rob Williams, Senior
Fellow and Director of Academic Programs at Resources for
the Future (RFF). He’ll discuss results from two recent
papers RFF published that examine the different impacts a
revenue-neutral carbon fee would have across U.S. states
and across income quintiles if the revenue was recycled to
reduce corporate taxes, to reduce payroll taxes, or returned
as a dividend. Rob and his RFF colleague Dallas Burtraw will
also be featured at the Nov. 19 briefings on Capitol Hill
before members of Congress.
Rob holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford and is a professor at the University of
Maryland, College Park. He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of
Economic Research.
Suggested Actions
1. Write to senators about the Environment and Energy Working Group.
2. Watch for letter to the editor opportunities later this month in conjunction
with the COP21 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris.
3. Participate in the Citizens’ Climate Education fall fundraising appeal.
ACTION
Write to senators about the Energy and
Environment Working Group
On Oct. 29, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) announced the “formation of a Senate Energy and
Environment Working Group that will focus on ways we can protect our environment and
climate while also bolstering clean energy innovation that helps drive job creation.”
In addition to Ayotte, other senators who joined the working group are Mark Kirk (IL),
Lindsey Graham (SC) and Lamar Alexander (TN)
As with the Gibson resolution in the House, we see this as a positive step toward engaging
Republicans on climate solutions and would like to see more Republicans joining the
working group.
At meetings this month, we suggest writing letters to our senators about the Energy and
Environment Working Group. There are three different letters that can be written,
depending on your senators.
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If your senator is one of the four who formed the working group, write a letter to
thank them for their leadership and suggest that they look at the REMI study on
Carbon Fee and Dividend.
If your senator is a Republican who is not in the working group, write and ask them
to join the Senate Energy and Environment Working Group.
If your senator is a Democrat, write to let them know that you recently heard about
Republicans who formed a the Senate Energy and Environment Working Group and
that you see this as a positive sign that Republicans and Democrats can soon work
together on climate solutions, particularly the market-based approach of a revenueneutral Carbon Fee and Dividend.
ACTION
Letters to the editor for Paris climate conference
The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris begins on Nov. 30. The hope is that
the conference will culminate in a global agreement on climate change with the nations of
the world making commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Prior to and during
the conference, look for opportunities in your newspaper – stories, commentary – to
respond with letters to the editor. We suggest assigning someone in your group to monitor
your newspaper for LTE opportunities and alert letter writers when those opportunities
arise. Make sure someone in your group files a field report for each letter published.
Possible points to write about
The urgency of a global climate agreement has been made clear by…
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A recent study from Stanford and U.C. Berkeley researchers finding that climate
change will have a much greater impact than previously thought, resulting in loss of
per capita income: “The benefits of action on mitigation are much greater than we
thought, because the costs
of inaction are much
greater than we thought."
Incredible flooding along
the East coast (at right)
during a king tide that will
get much worse from rising
sea levels.
Waves of refugees invading
Europe because of a
conflict that was
precipitated by extreme
drought in Syria, a trend that is bound to worsen.
A recent report in the New York Times that Greenland – whose ice sheet contains
enough water to raise sea levels 20 fee – is melting away.
Moving forward after Paris, the best way to achieve the necessary reductions in
greenhouse gas emissions is to put a price on carbon…
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The World Bank has announced the formation of the Carbon Pricing Panel, a highlevel group of heads of state, government leaders and business executives that is
calling on policymakers to use carbon pricing mechanisms to strengthen plans for
emissions reductions.
The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell has called upon governments to create an effective
system for pricing carbon.
The United States can lead the way by enacting legislation that places a steadilyrising fee on carbon with revenue returned to households.
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Former Secretary of State George Shultz says that a revenue-neutral carbon fee
would be an effective “insurance policy” against climate change, something he says
President Reagan might have done.
We no longer have to choose between protecting the economy and preserving the
climate when it comes to pricing carbon. The REMI study shows Carbon Fee &
Dividend will achieve 50% emissions reductions within 20 years while adding 2.8
million jobs to the economy.
Encouraging signs that Congress may soon be working on climate solutions:
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11 Republicans in the House of Representatives, led by Rep. Chris Gibson of New
York, introduced a resolution calling attention to the impacts of climate change and
the need to work on solutions.
Four Republican senators formed the Senate Energy and Environment Working
Group that will “focus on ways we can protect our environment and climate while
also bolstering clean energy innovation that helps drive job creation.”
A majority of Republicans now believe that climate change is occurring and the
humans contribute to the problem, and six major banks are calling for action to
address climate change.
ACTION
Participate in CCL’s annual fundraising appeal
We’re starting our annual year end appeal; which we’re hoping will bring in $200,000. This
money covers some of the infrastructure necessary to support all of our incredible
volunteers in the field as you do amazing work to move us forward to a significant, effective
climate solution.
If you want to help you can:
1. Make a donation at www.citizensclimate.org/give
2. Ask your friends and family to also make a donation, explaining to them why our
work is so important.
Feel free to donate now, or on Giving Tuesday, 12/1, when we have a $25,000 matching
grant, or any time before year end. Thank you so much!
Example of a note asking friends and family members to donate to our work:
Dear Mary,
As you know I’ve become quite active with Citizens’ Climate Lobby. Since I’ve joined this work I
feel much more hopeful about our chances of effectively dealing with climate change.
Would you please consider making a donation to support this work? If so you can make a taxdeductible contribution by going to:
www.citizensclimate.org/give
I’m making my donation on Giving Tuesday, December 1st. CCL has a matching grant on that
day so my donation is doubled. But any day is a good day to support this wonderful
organization!
Your gift will help us as we work to ensure a bright future for generations to come! Thank you.
Love, Lynate
House and Senate briefings on Nov. 19
CCL is organizing briefings in the House and Senate for Nov. 19 for members of
Congress and staff. CCL’s congressional liaisons are making requests with offices to
attend these briefings, and the request will also be brought up in meetings during
our November Lobby Day.
Here are the details:
What: Briefings for the Senate & House
Date: Thursday, November 19, 2015
Time: Senate: 10:00am / House: 3:00pm
Location: Senate: Russell 485 / House: Rayburn 2168
Details: This briefing, presented by Resources for the Future economists Dallas
Burtraw and Rob Williams, will review results from their recent studies that focused
on how a revenue-neutral carbon fee would affect people living in different states,
and people in different income quintiles.
Goal: We would like to get this announcement in front of House & Senate Staff 4-5
times before the briefing.
LASER TALK
Rural Voters Benefit from Fee and Dividend
It is true that rural Americans use more fossil fuels than urban dwellers, but suburban
dwellers use more than both [1]. However, just as previous studies have found [2, 3],
geography doesn’t matter all that much for the impact of a carbon tax. Rather, the strongest
correlation is not between carbon emissions and where you live, but between carbon
emissions and how much money you make. Suburbanites tend to be richer.
This becomes more apparent when you realize that only about 36% of the average
American’s fossil fuel use is from direct emissions (i.e. turning on the lights and filling the
tank). 64% of our fossil fuel consumption comes from indirect use. That is, it’s embedded in
in the products we buy. In other words, nearly two out of every three times we’re making a
climate-relevant decision, we don’t even know it! This also explains why wealth is so closely
tied to carbon emissions: Wealthier Americans can afford to buy more stuff.
When returning 100% of the revenue raised from a fee as a monthly dividend to all
households in the U.S. on a per-capita basis, about two-thirds of households end up ahead
[4]. This is because the poor are inherently more “carbon-virtuous” than the rich because
they buy fewer products with embedded carbon emissions that account for 64% of the
average Americans’ carbon footprint. However, with such a dividend policy, there is no
reason a carbon-conscious wealthy individual could not also adjust their decision-making to
earn back more from the dividend than they are spending in increased carbon costs.
1. Kevin Ummel. 2014. “Who Pollutes? A Household-Level Database of America’s
Greenhouse Gas Footprint.” CGD Working Paper 381. Washington, DC: Center for
Global Development. http://www.cgdev.org/publication/who-pollutes-householdlevel-database-americas-greenhouse-gas-footprint-working-paper
2. Kevin A. Hassett, Aparna Mathur, and Gilbert E. Metcalf. “The Incidence of a U.S.
Carbon Tax: A Lifetime and Regional Analysis”. 2009. The Energy Journal, Vol. 30,
No. 2. URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/assa/2009/retrieve.php?pdfid=346
3. Dallas Burtraw, Richard Sweeney, and Margaret Walls. “The Incidence of U.S.
Climate Policy: Alternative Uses of Revenues from a Cap-and-Trade Auction” April,
2009. Resources for the Future. URL: http://www.rff.org/RFF/Documents/RFF-DP09-17.pdf
4. “Dividends”. The Carbon Tax Center. Last modified: Feb 12, 2015. URL:
http://www.carbontax.org/issues/investingrecycling-the-revenues/dividends/
Figure 1 from the CDG study. The yearly emissions and where they come from for an average
American are leftmost column. The first quintile includes the poorest 20% of Americans, whereas the
5th quintile includes the richest Americans. In this graph, the author chose to display the wealthiest
2% of Americans separately, so emissions for these individuals are not included in the 5th quintile.
Note that the poorest 3 quintiles have lower emissions than the average, indicating they’d all end up
ahead with CCL’s dividend.
Figure 3 from the CGD report. In this map, white indicates average emission, blue indicates below
average emissions, and red indicates above average emissions. With carbon fee and dividend,
average or below average emissions means you earn back more from the dividend than you pay in
increased energy costs.