Double Dividend: Make Money by Saving Nature

Saving nature is the
central issue. Carbon fuels destroy nature. The Gulf Death Gusher is the
most visible sign. But signs are everywhere. Overall global warming
increases hurricanes and floods, destroys habitats for plants, fish,
birds, and ground animals, spreads deserts, causes deadly waves, and
destroys glaciers and our polar ice caps. The use of carbon fuels has
been destroying nature. Our job now is to save it.

Interestingly,
there is a short, 39-page bill before the Senate that would allow us to
save nature and get paid substantially for doing it. It is the CLEAR
bill, first suggested by Peter Barnes, and introduced by Maria Cantwell
(D-WA) and Susan Collins (R-ME). It is simple, it works, and it pays
you!

The principle behind it is this: We US
citizens own the air over the US equally. Carbon-fuel sellers are
dumping pollution in our air, not just poisoning the air, but destroying
nature. At least they should pay for permits to dump, poison, and
destroy, and should be forced year-by-year to stop. Who should the
sellers pay for permits? All of us, the citizens who live here, should
be paid handsomely. And there should be predictably fewer permits every
year, till the practice ends or reaches tolerable levels.

Here's how
cap-and-cash works. Carbon-fuel profiteers introduce polluting fuels at
only 2,000 distribution points in the US. The EPA already monitors how
much polluting fuel each seller distributes. The CLEAR Act requires
sellers to compete at auction each year to buy pollution-permits to sell
their poisonous fuel, with a minimum and maximum price per permit set
each year. Every year, for 40 years, the number of permits is reduced,
until the 80% of the carbon pollution has been eliminated.

Who gets the
permit money? You do. The money goes into a trust. Twenty-five percent
goes to developing nonpolluting fuels and mitigating existing
environmental disasters. Most of it -- seventy-five percent -- is
distributed equally to all citizen-residents every month via electronic
bank transfers. A family of four, the first year would get between
$1,000 and $1,500, and the amount would go up each year. Why? The law of
supply and demand. As there are fewer permits to sell fuel, and as the
air gets cleaner, the price rises and you get more cash.

We all get a
double dividend: cleaner air while saving nature and a significant cash
dividend for owning the air. The hundreds of billions of dollars going
to citizens will be spent all over the country and will create jobs.
Everyone wins except the polluting fuels companies -- the BP's of the
world.

The Criteria for
Success

Administratively Simple: It
eliminates bureaucracy, and it brings credibility and transparency. It
just requires computer programs. It can be publicly checked to see if it
is working. There are no hidden deals or details.

Market-driven
without government: The trust will be outside of government.
Market mechanisms will determine the value of the permits and, hence,
the money paid to citizens.

Gradual Transition: There would
be no short-term market disruption. The transition would be gradual.

Market-driven
and convenient: Businesses that use carbon fuels will not have
to monitor their pollution. They will have a market-based incentive to
switch gradually to non-polluting fuels.

Predictable: Business
leaders will be able to plan for the future with no huge rush.

Encourages
Entrepreneurship: It will create incentives for innovation
and new energy industries.

Job-Creating: The cash going
into new energy industries and being spent all over the country will
create jobs.

The Opposite of
Taxation

Anti-tax: The CLEAR bill puts money into the
pockets of most citizens instead of taking money out.

Saves money: The cost of
polluting fuels will rise temporarily, while you get cash. Who gets
more, you or the oil and coal companies that raise their prices?

You will,
unless you're rich and can afford it! The richer you are, the more
energy you use. If you are among the seventy percent of citizens in the
lower and middle income brackets, you will get more in payments from the
CLEAR bill than you will pay for increases in fuel prices.

Why will
carbon fuel prices eventually fall? The prices depend on demand. Two
factors will reduce demand over time.

First, the
availability of non-carbon fuels. The CLEAR bill's 25% will help develop
non-carbon alternatives, which will reduce demand.

Second,
investment in not-needing-carbon-fuels through, say,
insulation and energy-efficiency, will reduce demand cumulatively. A barrel of
oil or ton of coal saved the first year through insulation or energy
efficiency will also be saved year-after-year. This will cumulatively
reduce demand for carbon fuels.

Double job-creation: Eliminating
the need, and hence the demand for carbon-polluting fuels will create
jobs in two ways. First, new energy and energy-efficiency industries
will need employees. Second, money saved on energy can be invested in,
or spent on, enterprises that will create jobs. Both are market
mechanisms. The jobs will mostly be in the private sector.

Politically
Achievable: Putting money in the pockets of people who will spend it
will be politically popular, as will job creation.

Who Loses?

Any
legislation that greatly reduces the use of carbon fuels --whether the
CLEAR bill or the current cap-and-trade bills -- will create "losers."

The
carbon-polluting industries -- the BP's of the world -- will lose, unless
they invest their vast profits in non-polluting energy and in
energy-efficiency: in industries that lower or eliminate the need for
energy use. Those industries that are committed to the continued
destruction of nature should lose, unless they change
their commitment to saving nature.

The pollution
dumping industries (e.g., electric power companies) will no longer be
able to save money by not cleaning up their pollution and dumping it in
our air instead. Having to switch to nonpolluting energy or pay more for
polluting energy will count as a "loss," since they will make less
short-term profit. In the long run, if they make the switch to
nonpolluting energy and energy efficiency, those profits will be made
up. But the short-term "losses" are what will count to investors.

Right-wing
politicians, supported by those industries, will also lose if they
cannot deliver to their nature-destroying supporters a defeat of any
nature-saving legislation. Those politicians will also lose because
their anti-environmental ideology, which says that nature is to be
indefinitely exploited for profit, will be defeated.

The Lies

Not
surprisingly, those who stand to lose are spreading lies about
carbon-cutting legislation.

The Tax Lie: Suppose there
was a direct tax on carbon. At the gas pump, the gas companies would
list this as a tax and add it to the price of gas at the pump. Now
suppose that nature-saving legislation results in a sort-term rise in
gas prices because oil companies want to preserve their previously
astronomical level of profits. In both cases, the price of gas would
rise. So, the argument goes, nature-saving legislation has the same
result as a tax, and therefore it is a tax.

In the case of
the CLEAR bill, the lie would be clear: Seventy percent of the
population would be making more than enough extra money to offset the
rise in prices. But what is not said, is that the prices at the pump
would not rise if the oil companies made ordinary profits rather than
excessive profits. The rise at the pump would, to a large extent, come
from making sure that wealthy oil executives and investors insisting on
outrageously high profits.

Also not figured in is
the cost of continuing to destroy nature indefinitely into the future:
the costs of more oil spills; more mountain tops blown into streams; of
more glacial sources of water as glaciers and snowcaps melt; of more and
more hurricanes, floods, and fires; of the loss of arable land to the
spread of deserts; of the loss of fish and forests -- and most of all,
the cost of the quality of life on earth.

At the heart
of the Tax Lie is the failure to figure in systemic costs, the
real costs -- both financial costs, life costs, and quality of life costs
-- and the failure to count greed.

The Job Lie: As we have
seen the CLEAR bill would create jobs, as would any legislation
seriously reducing or ending the use of polluting fuels. A certain
number of jobs would indeed be lost gradually in the nature-destroying
industries as demand for polluting fuels declined, but those would more
than be made up for as nature-saving fuels and nature-saving energy
efficiencies more than made up for the jobs lost.

The Simple
Truths

We need to save nature, not destroy it. We
can start to do so while making money, stimulating the economy, and
creating jobs.

Tell everyone you know about the Clear
Act.