Citizens’ Climate Education: Carbon Fee and Dividend

Harnessing market forces to reduce emissions through "carbon fee and dividend."

The Problem

The world needs to reduce its carbon emissions substantially and quickly to avoid disastrous climate change. While renewable energies are becoming more and more economically competitive, there are still strong economic incentives driving the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

The Solution

An important approach to reducing emissions is to include the future costs to the planet in the current cost of fossil fuels. "Carbon-fee-and-dividend" is a revenue-neutral approach that stimulates the economy and creates jobs by returning collected fees to households as a monthly dividend. Studies show that, after 20 years, it could reduce carbon emissions in the United States to 50 percent of 1990 levels while adding 2.8 million jobs. The Citizens' Climate Education proposes to start the fee at $15 per ton of carbon emitted and increase by $10 per year, which would increase the price of gasoline by 15 cents per gallon the first year and 10 cents each year afterwards.