Kudos and gratitude to The Herald’s environment reporter, Zachariah Bryan, for his inaugural Sept. 2 newsletter on an array of important local climate and environment topics, including the deaths of 134 Washingtonians due to August’s heat-related causes. And it grew worse this week nationwide: hundreds of water rescues in Philadelphia, dozens of deaths in New York, tornadoes with 23 dead in New Jersey, entire communities uninhabitable in Louisiana, unprecedented wildfires in California, and more.
Climatologists attribute many of these worsening record-setting disasters to our failure to gain control of man-made climate change. Thousands of economists and scientists, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, many Republican and Democratic leaders and many others agree that one of the most powerful and effective ways to control man-made climate change is to “put a price on carbon,” i.e., levy a fee to those who extract carbon-laden fossil fuels from the ground, or import from other nations. A growing number of other nations have already successfully put a price on carbon, including the European Emissions Trading System, in place since 2008.
However, our U.S. Congress has overlooked this most impactful carbon pricing strategy in the current notions of their reconciliation package, which will proceed toward further finalization in just several days. This is the time for each of us to ask our respective three members of Congress to “put a price on carbon in the reconciliation package.” And it’s easy and quick to do just that in under five minutes by clicking CCLUSA.org/senate and CCLUSA.org/house.
Lee Alley
Snohomish
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
