Earth Equity News

'Cap-and-Dividend' Would Recycle Higher Energy Prices Back to Consumers. By Marianne Lavelle, U.S. News & World Report, June 2, 2008. "What if every American got paid for being part of the climate change solution? There would be a lot more political support for doing something big, say advocates of 'cap-and-dividend,' an idea garnering increasing attention [in] Washington... Advocates... argue that a well-designed system could become as popular... and as sacrosanct as Social Security. The idea, spelled out in a working paper... by economists at the [UMass] Political Economy Research Institute, is to force the oil [and] coal companies, and other 'first sellers' of [carbon-emitting] fuel to buy federal permits for the right to sell... [with] the revenue... [going] into a fund [to] be distributed as dividends to every U.S. citizen -- perhaps in monthly payments directly into their bank accounts. It would be similar to the dividend Alaska residents receive to share in [oil exploration] revenue... Under cap-and-dividend, gas and... electricity prices nationwide would go up, but consumers would be getting cash to help them cope... No one, though, has been pushing cap-and-dividend harder than socially-responsible investment pioneer Peter Barnes... cofounder and former president of WorkingAssets... [He said,] 'For political reasons, if nothing else, you want people to notice the fact that they're getting money back...They already are mad as hell with gas prices and everything going up...The only way you can politically sustain higher energy prices is to recycle some of that revenue back to consumers.'"