There has been an alarming trend recently for the two most prominent Congressional climate initiatives to be presented as opponents.  It’s hard to tell if the organizations themselves think that, but it had better not start.   This is destructive nonsense, as the initiatives are complementary and the last thing we need is an intramural fight.

On one side there is the Green New Deal, which has been remarkably successful at rallying the Democratic Party around climate change as a primary issue.  GND tries to be comprehensive enough to be THE Democratic climate initiative.   They have also bundled a number of other key targets (e.g. full employment) into their program to make it clear that fighting climate change is a good deal for everyone.

On the other side is Citizen’s Climate Lobby, which presents itself as bipartisan and is focused specifically on what they call Carbon Fee and Dividend—a carefully constructed non-regressive version of a carbon tax.

These organizations need each other.   Green New Deal has thus far been ambivalent about a carbon tax, but the fact is that without one we are providing a massive subsidy to the fossil fuel industry.   Even a low-ball estimate of the true cost of the carbon dioxide spewed into the US atmosphere comes in at around $1T per year.  One way or another we can’t keep doing that; it’s a huge distortion of the economy toward business as usual.  CCL has done about as good a job as anyone in concept, rollout planning, and minimizing of side effects. (The opposite of the budget shenanigans that produced the Yellow Vests in France.)

On the other hand CCL is just not comprehensive.   A carbon tax will work better in some sectors than others, and there is no question that government will need to manage the whole process:  monitoring progress, making sure it works for everyone, introducing other incentives where needed, and spending money where the private sector is not going to get the job done.   A few obvious examples are preparation of the electrical grid, research spending, and looking after the international aspects of the problem.

As we’ve noted here before, no one has yet produced a real national plan for addressing climate change on some kind of schedule.  We need that level of comprehensiveness and specificity, and cooperation here would be a good first step.