Take Action Now – Sign the Petition

Carbon Fees Can and Should Be Imposed by the President Without Delay

On January 25, 2021, the renowned climate scientist James E. Hansen and CPR Initiative’s Dan Galpern wrote to President Biden and key members of his Climate Team.

Hansen and Galpern urged the President to:

make full use of a powerful tool already at your disposal to accelerate the necessary decarbonization of our power, industrial, agricultural, and transportation systems. That is, direct the EPA to . . . impose a revenue-neutral carbon fee,”

via invocation of “the Independent Offices Appropriation Act (IOAA), 31 U.S.C. §9701.”

In a public follow-up in the Boston Globe, Hansen and Galpern, urged the President to impose such a carbon fee “immediately,” even “[a]s the public experiences an increased frequency of extreme climate events, as young people worldwide cry out against the threat to their future, and as the United Nations approaches a major climate conference in November in Glasgow.”

They noted as well that “[i]f China and the United States agree on meaningful carbon fees, they can readily make it near-global via border duties on products from countries without carbon fees; that would encourage most nations to adopt the policy, so as to retain such revenue for their own people [and] help to further [President] Biden’s goal of addressing what he has aptly termed the “existential climate threat.”

CPR Initiative Petition 
President Biden:

Impose Carbon Fees on Oil, Gas and Coal Without Delay

Dear Mr. President:

Accordingly, we urge you to direct the Environmental Protection Agency to impose a rising fee on fossil fuels. Such carbon fees may be collected from the companies that produce, refine, and distribute fossil fuels in the U.S. To protect people from any ensuing rising cost, revenues should be distributed to households as annual dividends.

We urge you to impose such a rising carbon fee without delay.

Notable Signatories:

James E. Hansen

Director of Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions, Earth Institute, Columbia University & former Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

E. Donald Elliott

Former General Counsel
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Donn J. Viviani

President, Climate Protection & Restoration Initiative; retired EPA scientist

Lise Van Susteren

Physician, Board Member: Physicians for Social Responsibility, Earth Day Network, Climate Psychiatry Alliance, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, CPR Initiative

Mark Reynolds

Executive Director
Citizens’ Climate Lobby

Tim Crosland

Director, Plan B
(planb.earth)

Richard Heede

Director of Climate Accountability Institute, Carbon Majors Initiative

Mary Wood

Professor of Law, University of Oregon School of Law and author of Nature’s Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age

Dominick DellaSalla

Chief Scientist at Wild Heritage, a Project of the Earth Island Institute, and former President of the Society for Conservation Biology, North America Section.

Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh

Assistant Professor of Public International Law, Leiden University. Author of State Responsibility, Climate Change and Human Rights (2019)

John Birks

Professor Emeritus
Atmospheric Chemistry, University of Colorado, Boulder

Curt Johnson

President/CEO of Save the Sound

Bob Triest

Chair, Department of Economics at Northeastern University. Formerly, Vice President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Chad Hanson

Ecologist, John Muir Project

Dan Esty

Professor, Yale Law School and Yale School of the Environment

Richard Ottinger

Dean Emeritus, Pace University Law School; Founder, Chair, Pace Law School Energy and Climate Center, Chair Emeritus, Environmental and Energy Study Institute

Daphne Wysham

Chief Executive Officer, Methane Action

John Fitzgerald

CPR Initiative Board Member, Environmental Investigation Agency; Government Relations attorney and consultant, Methane Action

Joanna Campe

Executive Director, Remineralize the Earth

Stuart Scott (Deceased)

Executive Director & Executive Producer, FacingFuture.Earth, FacingFuture.TV, UPFSI.org


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