“Mankind’s relationship with the natural world is aggravating these problems and is a potential source of crisis itself,” Brennan said at one point in his speech. “Last year was the warmest on record, and this year is on track to be even warmer.”
The Atlantic: The Republican Solution for Climate Change
The idea of a revenue-neutral carbon tax is hardly new. My colleagues Clifford Cobb, Jonathan Rowe, and I wrote about this 20 years ago in an Atlantic cover story. What’s new is that in 2008, the right-of center government in British Columbia introduced such a plan, and sufficient time has now passed to weigh the results. Fossil fuel use in British Columbia has since fallen by 16 percent, as compared to a 3 percent increase in the rest of Canada, and its economy has outperformed the rest of the country. So the benefits of this approach are no longer theoretical.
Washington Post: Greenhouse Gases Hit New Milestone, Fueling Worries About Climate Change
Report: Climate Diplomacy After Paris: Opportunities for U.S. Leadership
Fixing Climate Change May Add No Costs, Report Says
In decades of public debate about global warming, one assumption has been accepted by virtually all factions: that tackling it would necessarily be costly. But a new report casts doubt on that idea, declaring that the necessary fixes could wind up being effectively free.
Bloomberg View: A (Not So) Crazy Idea to Sell Republicans a Carbon Tax
If you were to select the most hopeless cause in Washington, getting Republican lawmakers to support a carbon tax would have to make the shortlist. The idea combines much of what conservatives hate most: a new tax, less coal, a more intrusive government and an acknowledgment that scientists -- worse, scientists at the United Nations! -- might be right about something.