“Climate change is catastrophic” (May 28) gets it right. We must act now to prevent “catastrophic” climate change, making at least 50 percent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 (National Academy of Sciences/IPCC). That means we have to start now.
A 38-page, detailed clean energy policy, modeled on the Green New Deal’s energy plan, was recently released by Washington’s Governor Inslee (vox.com). It shows that two-thirds of the cost—$600 billion annually for a decade, will be paid by private investment—so, not socialism. The rest—$300 billion annually for a decade, can be paid for by the fossil fuel mega-corporations that knowingly caused the climate crisis while secretly spending over $2 billion to spread climate change denial (Scientific American, ucsusa.org, insideclimatenews.org, greenpeace.org, desmogblog.org).
“Carbon Dividends,” a bill now in Congress, that can do just that, adding $350 billion annually to our GDP, according to the Congressional Budget Office scoring. Canada’s used this same legislation successfully for a decade (The Guardian).
See how it works at citizensclimatelobby.org. Just a half-degree global temperature increase will cost the US $13 trillion; we’re already locked into a 1.5 degree increase and on a trajectory to a 3-5 degree increase (IPCC). Without Green New Deal-scale emissions cuts now, climate disasters will cost the US over $160 trillion (Forbes, April 2019), causing permanent “economic collapse” followed by “societal collapse” (National Academy of Sciences). “The Green New Deal is affordable; the cost of inaction is incalculable”—Forbes
Lynn Goldfarb
Lancaster, PA