We need to phase out fossil fuels, globally. Now. Here’s why:
The National Academy of Sciences says climate change poses “the most immediate and important threat to human survival.” According to Nature, the world’s most highly-cited peer-reviewed science journal, we must “bend the greenhouse-gas emissions curve downwards by 2020” to avert the worst effects of global warming.
Scientific American: “Have We Passed the Point of No Return on Climate Change? Greenhouse Gas Cuts Must Begin Soon or It Could Be Too Late to Halt Global Warming.” We could soon pass the tipping point into irreversible, run-away global warming and not even know it.
Worst-case scenario? All the oceans could boil dry (National Geographic).
We need to tax fossil fuel corporations out of existence and give all that tax money to the taxpayers in equal monthly checks. British Columbia’s done that for 8 years and they have the best economy in Canada: lower taxes and energy bills, more jobs and much lower emissions.
They’ve used “carbon fee-and-dividend”: Fossil fuels pay the fee, we get the “dividends” in equal monthly checks. The fee increases annually so do your dividends. Switch to solar/wind and you save more every year as they’re now as cheap or cheaper than any fossil fuel (Fortune) and they’ll continue to drop in price as they scale up (Bloomberg). This will create millions of jobs and increase GDP $75-80 billion annually (CitizensClimateLobby.org).
You can find out how we can make this happen now at the Citizens Climate Lobby.
Pete Kuntz resides in Lancaster. Pa.
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