If you want to fight for the environment, don't hug a tree; hug an economist. Hug the economist who tells you that fossil fuels are not only the third most heavily subsidized economic sector after road transportation and agriculture - they also promote vast inefficiencies. Hug the economist who tells you that the most efficient investment of a dollar is not in fossil fuels but in renewable energy sources that not only provide new jobs but cost less over time. Hug the economist who tells you that the price system matters; it's potentially the most potent tool of all for creating social change. -
- Bill Moyers
We should tax what we burn, not what we earn. This is the single most important policy change we can make.
-- Al Gore, Former US Vice President and 2008 Nobel Laureate
The pollution being sent into the atmosphere has a cost to all of us, so we want to price energy accordingly. That means things like wind energy suddenly become more appealing because they don't produce those pollutants, and other sources of energy become less appealing because they do. Companies would start inventing new things that would make our planet cleaner.
--President Obama, February 19, 2010, Town hall held in Nevada (Remarks excerpted)
The problem of climate change is so large that it can't be solved by voluntary individual responses. It requires an economy-wide solution, i.e. one that limits the total carbon intake of the economy.
– Peter Barnes, author and Working Assets co-founder
As long as national security risks aren’t factored into the cost of gasoline and as long as carbon dioxide can be emitted without penalty, oil will continue to have an advantage over emerging fuels in the marketplace, and we’ll continue our ruinous addiction to it.
-- Congressman Bob Inglis
Every day that we delay trying to find a price for carbon is a day that China uses to dominate the green economy.
-- Senator Lindsey Graham
Cap and rebate has always been the cleanest, most sensible way to take on this monumental task of scrubbing the carbon from our economy. Instead of turning the operation, and the money, over to corporations, every American gets a check every month--it's as if we each owned a share of the sky. And a 39-page bill--that's a good sign right there!
-- Bill McKibben, author/activist
The challenge for governments is to adopt policies that address the increasing energy demand but within the long-term context of climate change. Many elements can be considered: ways of making coal cleaner; rapidly developing and supporting a suite of renewable energy technologies with an emphasis on increased energy efficiency; carbon caps and trading; and, of course, looking hard at ways of reducing and localising energy demand.
– Peter Garrett, Australian musician and politician
A concerted, nationwide effort to reduce GHG emissions would almost certainly stimulate economic forces and create business opportunities that we cannot foresee today and that may accelerate the rate of abatement the nation can achieve, thereby reducing the overall cost.
-- McKinsey & Company
We don’t have time to get this wrong. We don’t have time to wait another five years, the time it has taken Europe to discover that its cap-and-trade system has failed to effectively reduce emissions. The future of our planet is too important to rush headlong down policy paths that may not provide the most effective solutions.
-- Elaine Kamarck, Co-chair, U.S. Climate Task Force