Letter to Editor: Thanks to Chestertown Council for Supporting the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act
Staying home to mitigate the spread of COVID 19 has shown us that using less fossil fuel clears skies of pollution and cleans waters for sea life. Transportation though is not the only way greenhouse gases are emitted into our atmosphere, and we need a working economy as we transition away from the use of fossil fuels. We need a systemic approach to battle climate change that is good for people and good for our economy. We now see what happens when we are unprepared for a global crisis. That’s why we need to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to non-carbon energy sources so we can avert a global climate catastrophe.
The 100 members of Citizens’ Climate Lobby Chestertown Chapter would like to thank the Chestertown Council for voting to endorse the bipartisan Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2019 (H.R. 763) at the Chestertown Mayor and Council meeting on May 18th. Their vote is a vote to create a systemic shift in our culture through putting a fee on carbon as it is pulled out of our earth and giving the proceeds of those fees to households as a dividend to promote the transition to renewable energy.
It is a great show of leadership from the Council to formally vote to say that we need federal legislation for climate action. HR 763, is active now in the House of Representatives and has 81 co-sponsors. Our town’s endorsement joins endorsements from 110 other local governments, 658 businesses, 6 tribal entities, 105 faith groups (including Chester River Meeting), 14 colleges (including Washington College), 174 non-profits (including ShoreRivers), and many prominent individuals including our local Elizabeth Salett, President, O.L.P. Foundation, and Dr. James Hansen, the Former Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies who warned Congress about climate change in 1988.
Citizens’ Climate Lobby is a non-partisan, non-profit education and advocacy organization that works with volunteers across our nation and the world to develop the political will for climate action. While we all need to become more resilient and adapt because climate action wasn’t taken earlier, we also recognize that preventing further heat trapping gases from entering our atmosphere requires large systemic change. This bipartisan bill gives us that opportunity by making fossil fuel companies pay for the external cost of using their product. They have been benefiting from pulling the resource out of our earth, and we’ve all been paying for it with costs to our health and our economy, with polluted air, rising sea- levels, eroding coastlines, stronger storms, and more hot days. It is important to remember that adaption to the effects of climate change is expensive and Federal grants are really taxpayer dollars.
Your business or nonprofit can endorse this bill as well! Endorsements send a strong message to our representatives that we want climate action. The changing salinity, increasing acidity and temperature of our waters is changing conditions for our watermen, flooding and salt water intrusion are affecting our farmers, and coastal properties are losing value. Endorsing this bill and creating the political will for climate action takes little time but is very significant.
Citizens’ Climate Lobby will be lobbying Representative Andy Harris on June 17th to let him know we want him to cosponsor the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act(H.R. 763). Please support us by calling his office and letting him know you want this too.
Hope Clark
Citizens’ Climate Lobby Group Leader and Liaison to Representative Andy Harris