Carbon Pricing Is the Most Silver Bullet-ish Policy We Know Of

The article says that carbon pricing applied on a global basis in combination with progressive climate policy are needed to keep global heating well below 2°C.
In other words, national carbon pricing programs (such as carbon fee-and-dividend as implemented here in Canada), while steps in the right direction, are not going to be adequate.
With billions of dollars at stake, the temptation for cheating by individual nations will be too great.
How to get there?
In many jurisdictions, major new taxes require approval by referendum. Using that as a precedent, global carbon pricing would require approval by a global referendum.
Such a decision-making process would help give the legitimacy that global carbon pricing would need to be universally accepted and continue for the length of time (decades if not centuries) needed.
In Switzerland, population 7 million, citizens can force major law changes to go to referendum by collecting 100,000 names. An equivalent number for a worldwide petition would be about 100 million names.
https://tinyurl.com/GlobalCarbonPetition
#GlobalCarbonFeeAndDividendPetition

I am very much in favor of a carbon tax. However, the current carbon tax bills are all too flawed in major ways. Here is an opinion piece (op-ed) I helped write with Physicians for Social Responsibility–Arizona Chapter. Since the time I helped write this, I have been alerted that the bill might be much worse than this. That is, the Clean Air Act (CAA) carbon regulation is terminated under the CCL-supported HR763 for 10 years. What makes this worse is that any — repeat any — associated particulate and chemical pollution that is in synch with the CO2 production (which is pretty much all of them) could be enjoined with CO2 regulation. All such regulation could be stripped from EPA authority. This would invalidate much of the CAA. And this would be even much worse than simply stripping the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing the CO2 regulation of the CAA. Here’s the op-ed:

Global Warming Solutions Need to be Wisely Planned

From low to high impacts, humans are causing climate changes that affect our world.
Low impacts include simple comfort changes with more varying weather conditions. Medium impacts include more frequent adverse temperature records. High impacts include extreme temperatures combined with droughts, then sometimes also with power failures jeopardizing people who must be cool enough to stay alive. High impacts exacerbate wildfire and extreme weather events, create species loss, escalate diseases, and potentially cause societal collapse.
Over 60% of global warming is caused by the energy sector of our economy. Hence, urgent global warming solutions need to focus heavily on our energy sector.
Increasing energy efficiency offers the largest impact. Installing more renewable energy capacity and eliminating fossil fuels and nuclear capacity go a long way toward solving global warming. Improving our energy policy on city, county, state, national, regional, and global levels, are all critical measures.
One such policy that has a fairly high long-term potential is the establishment of a carbon tax, or a fee, on carbon pollution. For about ten years now, carbon tax bills have been winding their way slowly through committees of Congress. The bill that was recently touted in two opinion pieces in the Star is the U.S. House bill HR763, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2019.
But something went haywire with this carbon tax and dividend bill at the congressional committee level. This carbon tax option was corrupted by a proposed trade-off of one of our bedrock environmental protections, namely our Clean Air Act. Hence many are opposing a carbon tax that has gone awry, instead of promoting this high-potential option.
Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) opposes this bill. And the Sierra Club does not support HR763. Why? This is primarily because HR763 would trade away a vital part of the Clean Air Act. It would put Environmental Protection Agency pollution emissions regulation on hold for at least ten years. It would discard a critical tool to fight climate change. We need the Environmental Protection Agency to fully regulate air pollution, including excessive CO2 and other global warming gasses, under the Clean Air Act.
Just as importantly, HR763 would set a bad precedent by trading away an environmental law that protects public health. Coal and gas plants and gasoline-powered automobile emissions are notoriously known to cause life-threatening health problems. They cause asthma, chronic lung disease, cardiovascular disease, birth defects and much more. And they cause them most often in low-income and vulnerable multi-ethnic communities where these pollution sources are often located. We cannot afford to risk a cascade of subsequent health and environmental problems from trade-offs of our environmental laws.
Another problem with HR763 is that it promotes “carbon capture and sequestration” of gases from coal plant and gas plant emission stacks. This technology has been shown to actually require more mining of coal and gas. It is too environmentally damaging and expensive, and would actually set back solutions to global warming.

The courts have ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate CO2, and some of the ways it could reduce CO2 emissions are:
 Encouraging multi-state carbon tax arrangements;
 Limiting emissions from coal and gas plants; and
 Establishing and managing enforcement programs.

A well-planned carbon tax is a good thing. One that disables our environmental laws is not acceptable. Please ask your representative to oppose this bill. In southern Arizona, Congressional Representatives are Raul Grijalva and Ann Kirkpatrick.
You can contact either of them by going to: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative.

Barbara H. Warren, MD, MPH
Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility