Editor’s note: This commentary is by Rep. Diana González, of Winooski, who represents Chittenden 6-7 in the Vermont House of Representatives. She is a member of the Housing, General, and Military Affairs committee.
[L]ast week I introduced H. 531, an Act Relating to Carbon Dividends. I introduced this bill because climate change is real, and it’s scary, but there’s hope if we work together to solve it.
I modeled this bill after the Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends and created a Vermont Case for Carbon Dividends.
The Department of Defense classifies climate change as a national security threat. Pope Francis calls it a sin. Fortune 500 businesses are preparing for a world of rising temperatures and sea levels. The Vermont Department of Health warns that “Climate change increases health risks for Vermonters.” And a recent study estimates that a child born this decade will lose over three-quarters of a million dollars in wealth paying for the impacts of unchecked climate change.
This is not the legacy we should leave to young Vermonters.
Thankfully, the solutions to the climate crisis – conservation, efficiency and low-carbon energy – already exist. Even better, Vermont is a leader in these fields and the transition to clean energy will create jobs and strengthen Vermont’s economy.
What is missing are policies to drive rapid adoption of these new technologies.
H.531 is a conversation starter that proposes three legs of a carbon dividends plan.
Economists of all political persuasions agree that pricing carbon pollution is the simplest, least costly and most efficient way to achieve significant carbon reductions. Additionally, a well-designed fee-and-dividend system is both equitable and easy to administer.
As a testament to the nonpartisan nature of climate change and the opportunity for a nonpartisan solution, H.531 – introduced by a Progressive/Democrat from one of Vermont’s most economically and culturally diverse communities – builds on a proposal forwarded by Republican cabinet secretaries from the Reagan and Bush administrations.
As James Baker, George Shultz and Henry Paulson write in their Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends, “Mounting evidence of climate change is growing too strong to ignore.”
Carbon dividends paired with a revenue neutral carbon pollution fee – similar to the plan proposed by these distinguished Republicans, but tailored to Vermont – would provide Vermonters both the incentive to transition off of fossil fuels and the means to do so.
H.531 is a conversation starter that proposes three legs of a carbon dividends plan.
The first leg of the plan is a gradually increasing fee on the carbon pollution content of fossil fuels paid by the 100 or so companies that distribute these fuels in Vermont. A sensible fee might begin at $10 a ton and increase over time until reaching the social cost of carbon as calculated by the Environmental Protection Agency. (Vermont’s fee would be well below the level proposed by the national Republicans.)
One hundred percent of the revenues raised from the residential sector should be returned to individual Vermonters in quarterly dividend payments. This is the second leg of the plan. Every three months Vermonters would receive a dividend check. Dividends could be distributed in equal shares or based on each community’s dependence on fossil fuels. An equal share would be administratively simple. A dividend based on consumption estimates would provide more money back to communities with longer commutes and less access to lower-cost natural gas.
The third leg of the plan is dividends for every Vermont business. This is a departure from the conservative proposal which does not provide dividends to businesses, but is an adjustment that will maintain Vermont business competitiveness. All of the revenues from Vermont’s commercial, industrial and agricultural sectors should be returned to those sectors. In this way, Vermont businesses share in the rewards of a carbon dividends system.
This is an era of hyper-partisanship. Good ideas die just because they were proposed by the other team. So when a liberal Latina from Winooski finds common ground with conservatives from the Reagan and Bush administrations, there’s an opportunity for nonpartisan dialog and consensus-building around climate action that strengthens Vermont’s economy and communities.
Welcome to that conversation.
