As reported in a recent paper published in the journal Science (Aug. 22, 2024), a study that evaluated 1,500 climate policies implemented over the past 25 years “identified the 63 most successful ones.” The conclusion: “Our insights on effective but rarely studied policy combinations highlight the important role of price-based instruments in well-designed policy mixes and the policy efforts necessary for closing the emissions gap.”

For more than a decade, Citizens’ Climate Lobby has been advocating for a steadily rising price on carbon emissions that, when combined with a “cashback” dividend, will lead to a world that heats up no more than 2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. That’s what we all promised with the 2015 Paris Accord.

The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (H.R.5744) will apply a carbon price at the source (mine, well, port of entry), collect the revenue and return it to each American as a monthly “carbon dividend payment.”

For most of us, the monthly dividend will more than offset the increase in cost of carbon-based products. And for all of us, reducing our use of those carbon-based products will mean more money in our pockets.

The U.S. is the only major industrial economy without a carbon price. It’s way past time to put one in place.

Bruce Cooper, Cranberry Township, group leader of Slippery Rock chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby