Clean energy is where the jobs are
This is in response to the March 30 letter from Frank Trapuzzano, “The EPA must ease restrictions.” Over 200,000 Americans die from carbon pollution each year. It’s the Environmental Protection Agency’s job to reduce those deaths. Carbon pollution also costs Americans over $866.5 billion annually for treatment of carbon-caused illnesses, a tremendous drag on our economy. The Trump administration’s gutting of the EPA is intended to put corporate profits over the health and safety of the American people.
The EPA also fights climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change has cost U.S. taxpayers over $1 trillion so far, and the bill is going to get a lot bigger soon. Another reason why the EPA is an extremely cost-effective agency.
Fortunately, if President Trump does manage to destroy the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, it may focus attention on a better and faster way to phase out fossil fuels. It doesn’t require any government regulations, expansion or expenditures, and it won’t cost consumers or taxpayers anything. In fact, it will put extra cash in middle-class and lower-income Americans’ pockets every month. It’s a carbon tax that’s paid to the taxpayers. Every fossil fuel corporation would pay an escalating carbon pollution tax to every taxpayer in quarterly “dividend” checks. As the tax increases, so do people’s “dividends.” People who use that money to buy cheaper clean energy make a profit. And that’s projected to increase GDP $75-80 billion annually. It’s also projected to create over 5 million good-paying, permanent clean-energy jobs.
This isn’t just economic theory either. “Carbon tax-and-dividend” has worked as promised in British Columbia for the past eight years, lowering taxes and energy bills while creating the best economy of any Canadian province. It has a whopping 83 percent public approval rating there.
It’s true that President Trump and the GOP have not supported clean energy, but Trump has promised millions of jobs and he’s not going to find them in manufacturing or fossil fuels because both sectors continue to lose jobs to automation, not trade deals. The jobs are in clean energy, which has grown 35 percent annually for the past five years and now employs more Americans than the entire U.S. fossil fuel industry.
Lynn Goldfarb
Lancaster