Citizens’ Climate Lobby hosts outreach, workshop events

PALMER — Can economic policy solve climate change? The Citizens’ Climate Lobby thinks so.

The non-partisan, non-profit group is hosting an outreach meeting on Sunday, Feb. 5 at the Palmer Depot at 3 p.m., and a training workshop on Monday, Feb. 6 at Vagabond Blues from 5:30 to 8 p.m.

“There’s so many ways climate change is the huge issue of our time,” said Palmer resident and CCL volunteer Phil Somervell. “This overshadows everything, really. And that’s true whether you’re a commercial fisherman or farmer, or just somebody who lives on the planet.”

Somervell is a retired epidemiology researcher – someone who studies how diseases originate and propagate through a group of people. He said he supports the climate lobby for its pro-economic growth approach to climate change.

“Our proposal, we’ve contracted for researcher to look at economic benefits, and it actually would be good for the economy and produce more jobs,” Somervell said. “It’s based on using the free market to encourage the development of renewable energy and energy efficiency. Those are things that produce many more jobs than oil and gas.”

The CCL proposal starts with monetizing externalized costs. Those are the costs that are incurred in the course of an economic activity, but not borne by the companies profiting from it.

Externalized costs could be anything from the health care costs borne by locals in the case of a company permitted by a government to dump unsafe amounts of wastes into a local water supply, to costs incurred by human subjects in pharmaceutical research.

Or, in this case, the costs incurred by average Americans from climate change.

The concept of externalized costs in economics is not generally controversial. But the calculations of those costs, and policy decisions about who should pay for them, can be.

In the CCL proposal, the externalized costs of climate change would be paid by resource extraction companies through fees. They would then be given back to American citizens through dividends.

The group calls it the Carbon Fee and Dividend system.

Import fees would also be placed on foreign goods from countries that don’t have a carbon fee.

Citizens’ Climate Lobby asserts that a study from a contracted research firm, Regional Economic Models, Inc., “shows that carbon fee-and-dividend will reduce CO2 emissions 52 percent below 1990 levels in 20 years, and that recycling the revenue creates an economic stimulus that adds 2.8 million jobs to the economy.”

Somervell said he thinks the proposal will work.

“The challenge is to help members of congress understand that, and see how it makes sense,” Somervell said. “And, of course, we also work with the public, we try to develop public support. That also helps.”

George Donart, the Alaska coordinator for CCL, and Tamara Staton, co-leader of the Portland CCL Chapter, will present at the Sunday outreach event and Monday workshop. For more information about CCL, go to www.citizensclimatelobby.org.

Contact reporter Mary Lockman at 352-2266 or mary.lockman@frontiersman.com