Earth Equity News

Making a Fair Deal on Carbon. OpEd by Steven Chu, 1/15/16. “Last month, 196 countries reached a landmark consensus agreement in Paris to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to slow global warming, agreeing to work toward capping a global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius…We need meaningful actions that will dramatically decrease carbon emissions at the lowest possible cost. Numerous industries, including six major oil companies, have asked for a carbon pricing system to be initiated at the national, regional, and, ultimately, international level… [During the Paris talks,] my colleagues and I came out in favor of a revenue-neutral carbon tax. A simple carbon tax maximizes transparency, minimizes market manipulation and regulatory complexity, and provides investment certainty... A meaningful, and timely, global price on carbon is essential to get us to where we have to be in the coming decades. Otherwise, to quote Martin Luther King, ‘There is such a thing as being too late.’” Steven Chu is a Nobel laureate in physics and former US secretary of energy.