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| John Gage |
The Carbon Cashback Initiative - Putting Climate Power in the Hands of Citizens
Building on earlier Successes, CCL Ramps up the Effort to Put Carbon Cashback on Town Warrants
Listen here:
https://feeds.podetize.com/OpZjBxCG1.mp3
John Gage, NH State Coordinator for the National Citizen's Climate Lobby, this episode's guest, makes the case that - while our individual efforts to reduce our carbon footprints are important - national and International change is only achieved through the power of all our efforts taken together.
50 years ago Bobby Kennedy - a radical centrist in his own right - put it this way.
"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
~ Robert F. Kennedy
Drawing on this notion of the power of our collective efforts, Climate activists from across the country - led by the non-partisan Citizen's Climate Lobby and the conservative Climate Leadership Council - have embraced the idea of a Carbon fee and direct dividend payments to citizens - circumventing the bureaucracy of traditional taxation methods and putting the revenues from the carbon fee directly into the pockets of every citizen.
Striking right at the heart of the problem - the need to dramatically reduce the amount of carbon that we are putting into the atmosphere - they propose a creative market-based idea called - among other things - the Carbon Cashback Initiative: Marshaling the forces of grassroots activists, citizens through their local governments and both State and Federal initiatives.
Simply put, Carbon Cashback recognizes that we all pay the price of putting more and more carbon into our atmosphere, But it is only the emitters of that carbon who currently profit.
To use an old bridge builder's term, Carbon Cashback "trues up" the shortcomings of the market and rewards those who make substantial progress in reducing their carbon footprint, making them more competitive in the international marketplace and at the same time making the planet safer for all of us.
Links and Resources
Show Notes:
https://centristchange.blogspot.com/2022/12/ep-49-john-gage-grassroots-movement-for.html
Kudos to Representative Ann McLane Kuster who has joined as a sponsor of the federal bill. Contact your Rep and Senators to ask them to get on board!
Humorous video by CCL about the "far middle": https://www.youtube.
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