Dear Editor:
At the Paris Climate Conference, nearly 200 nations agreed to keep global temperatures from rising to less than two degrees Celsius over preindustrial times. What better gift could we give our young people this season than the hope for a livable planet?
Some will say the gift box is empty because there is no legally binding treaty, or that pledges to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions fall short of the goal. But countries pledged greater reductions as we move forward.
Our local Grinch is Congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer. He said the agreement put "wishful thinking ahead of our economy," and that "it is based on the president's climate plan that doesn't even have the support of the American people."
The nations of the world sent a powerful signal to the marketplace that our future will demand low-carbon solutions. This signal will move trillions of dollars into new climate-smart investments.
This new era of opportunity wasn't missed by corporate America. In support for an aggressive global climate agreement in Paris, 154 signatories representing businesses that employ nearly 11 million people and represent more than $4.2 trillion in annual revenue signed the American Business Act on Climate Pledge.
Based on Yale Climate Opinion Maps, Luetkemeyer's constituents show significant support for the president's climate policy: 59 percent support setting strict CO2 limits on existing coal-fired power plants.
Nobody wants a healthy economy more than corporate CEOs, and families do want public policy that protects their children from the ravages of unmitigated climate change.
A real gift from Congress would be a carbon fee that returns all revenue back to households in the form of a dividend. Multiple studies show that this would help us ramp up our emission-reduction pledges while depositing monthly dividends in our bank accounts, and most importantly, speed our transition to a modern clean-energy economy.
But, rather than seek opportunities to leverage the Paris agreement to build a better future, Luetkemeyer has pledged to continue pushing legislation to defund the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Green Climate Fund.
Should his legislation pass, or should a small cabal in the U.S. Congress succeed at crippling the Paris agreement, that would indeed be a lump of coal in our stockings.
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