Earth Equity News

Progressive Democrats: Price Carbon Directly and Recycle Revenue to Households. Press Release, PDA, October 26, 2009. "Progressive Democrats of America finalized a months-long process with their endorsement of direct carbon pricing, with revenue recycling as the preferred method for reducing carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere. Read the statement here. The Stop Global Warming/Environmental Issues Organizing Team, led by Dave Massen, has been sifting through different legislative proposals in the House and Senate since late last year. 'When we began the process, individual team members supported several different mechanisms for reducing CO2,' said Massen, who originally leaned toward cap and trade. 'But in view of the recent economic meltdown, we became concerned that even with some proposed new regulations, a large market for trading carbon derivatives would also be vulnerable to a collapse with global repercussions, especially since hard-to-verify offsets are likely to be part of any trading scheme. Additionally, it seemed that paying Wall Street traders would add unnecessarily to the costs of reducing carbon.' Cap and trade has been implemented in Europe and has so far failed to meet the necessary targets because of offsets, free allowances and trading. Sweden and British Columbia have implemented direct carbon pricing (upstream carbon fees) and are making good headway toward meeting targets while showing strong economic growth."