Letter - Enact carbon tax on coal, oil, natural gas

To the editor:

A recent report by the American Society of Civil Engineers warns that the nation’s infrastructure is in bad repair. Levies, sewers and water systems, bridges, waterways and highways are past their needed age of replacement. Upgrading costs are in the multi-billions and are going unaddressed.

As climate change brings us new weather challenges, the nation’s infrastructure needs will necessarily have to compete with the cost of disaster relief: droughts, agricultural losses, floods and storms. It is difficult to see how all these needs can be met even if we had a functional political system.

These competing needs cannot be allowed to go unmet, yet we cannot afford all that the future portends without adding to the bloated debt. Therefore, we must act to reduce the likelihood of future climate-related disasters which threaten to drain the public purse and forestall needed public projects.

We can speed the transition to clean energy and reduce our use of climate-changing fossil fuels most quickly, efficiently and effectively if we enact a carbon tax on coal, oil and natural gas, levied at the source, and increasing year over year until CO2 ppm are reduced to 1990 levels. This revenue should be returned to the American people as a direct dividend in full or part in order to offset any price increases in basic consumer goods.

Jeanne Johnson,

7th Congressional District

Citizens Climate Lobby

Alexandria, MN

Tags: opinion, letters