CarbonTax.org

06/23/2010 by James Handley

On Monday, Dr. Laurie Geller, director of the National Academy of Sciences’ new blue-ribbon climate
change report, briefed the Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s
National Conference, kicking off CCL’s Washington lobby week. Part I
of NAS’s report stresses the strong evidence and broad scientific
consensus that Earth’s surface is warming due to human-caused fossil
fuel burning. NAS recommends further research on managing impacts on
ecosystems, food production, public health and climate policy.

Part II, “Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change” calls for immediate, urgent action; its top recommendation is to “Adopt an economy-wide
carbon pricing system.” It also urges additional clean energy
R&D, research into how behavior and technology interact and
incentives for low greenhouse gas energy technologies. Part III, on
adaptation, suggests responses to the inevitable consequences of climate
change already in motion. Recommendations include: “develop hot
weather early warning systems” as Philadelphia has done, and “Alaska:
Retreat from the Coast” beginning the process of relocation from areas
where thawing and erosion are rendering present settlements untenable.

Lester Brown, whose book “Plan B 4.0” is an inspiring blueprint for a sustainable, low-carbon
future, also addressed the CCL conference. Brown reminded us that just
as the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor sparked President Roosevelt’s
call on industrialists to convert automobile and steel manufacturing
into wartime production leading to victory in WWII, we can and must
rapidly re-orient our economy away from fossil fuels and toward
efficiency and renewables to avert climate disaster — a far more
profound threat to our security than Japanese invasion was in 1942. He
stressed that a gradually and predictably-rising carbon tax is one of
the key policies needed for climate stability essential to human
civilization.