Citizens' Climate Lobby (CCL) is an international grassroots environmental group that trains and supports volunteers to build relationships with their elected representatives in order to influence climate policy. The CCL is a registered 501(c)(4) with approximately $680,000 in revenue in the United States in 2018. Operating since 2007, the goal of CCL is to build political support across party lines to put a price on carbon, specifically a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend (CF&D) at the national level. CCL is supported by notable climate scientists James Hansen, Katharine Hayhoe, and Daniel Kammen. CCL's advisory board also includes former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, former US Representative Bob Inglis, actor Don Cheadle, and RESULTS founder Sam Daley-Harris.
Founded in the United States, the CCL has chapters in over 70 countries.
Introduction The Citizens' Climate Lobby is a non-partisan organization with members throughout the United States, Canada and other countries, which advocates for effective climate legislation. Its stated mission is to create the political will for a sustainable climate, while empowering individuals to exercise their personal and political power. With the international/US headquarters in Coronado, California, and a Canadian national office in Sudbury, Ontario, Citizens' Climate Lobby is composed of local volunteer groups who lobby their elected representatives and work through local outreach and media. Their goal is to cut greenhouse gas emissions and promote a transition to a renewable energy economy through a market-based approach: a revenue-neutral 'carbon fee and dividend' approach to pricing carbon pollution from fossil fuels, and simultaneously ending subsidies to fossil fuel companies. In the United States, using a market-based approach by putting a price on carbon is gaining support from both Republicans and Democrats. CCL believes that a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend is a bipartisan solution that would effectively address carbon emissions without relying on a complex regulatory approach.
History The Citizens' Climate lobby originated in the United States in 2007 after founder Marshall L. Saunders recognized the need for progressive climate legislation. Saunders, a successful businessman turned philanthropist, internationally recognized for his work in microcredit, became increasingly concerned about climate change. Saunders increasingly recognized that while it was necessary for individuals to change their own behavior in the face of climate change, it would never be enough; the time had come for Congress to discontinue subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. With ever-rising energy production and increased use Saunders believed effective legislation was necessary to cut carbon emissions, by putting a price on carbon.
Saunders coordinated his efforts to establish Citizens' Climate Lobby with RESULTS, an organization committed to helping volunteer organizations seeking legislative changes to become more effective. Groups of volunteers organized by electoral districts could work through local media and elected officials to build public support and political will for change. Citizens' Climate Lobby established its primary, interconnected goals – to achieve legislation at the federal level that would effectively mitigate climate change, to create widespread political will for a sustainable climate, and to empower citizens to better exercise their own political and personal will. United States leadership is widely seen as critical in international emissions reduction efforts, and particularly in carbon pricing, as this would encourage other countries to follow suit with similar legislation.
The Citizens' Climate Lobby held its first annual conference in 2009 in Washington, D.C., bringing together representatives from around the United States as well as several Canadians. These Canadians subsequently led the establishment of the organization within Canada in 2011, with the first chapter emerging in Sudbury, Ontario.
Since the initial development of Citizens' Climate Lobby, the group has rapidly grown and spread, from 3 local groups in 2007 to 327 groups in May 2016. They are located throughout the United States and Canada, and more recently branching out to other countries including Sweden, Bangladesh (both starting in 2013), Australia, Germany, India, Nepal, Panama, United Kingdom, Burundi, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, France, Kenya, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Qatar, Poland, Romania, Portugal, Serbia, Scotland, Switzerland and Ukraine.
Volunteers in local chapters meet monthly for teleconference lectures by climate experts and communication with other groups, to discuss coordinated actions to be undertaken by members, to practice skills involved in lobbying politicians and dealing with media, and to plan local outreach. These activities support the ongoing goals of the organization and contribute to progress toward effective carbon pricing legislation.
Proposed US legislation
Citizens' Climate Lobby proposes national legislation that would reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by placing a fee on carbon dioxide () or equivalent gases. The fee would be levied against all fossil fuels at their point of entry into the economy. The revenue that would be collected would be 100% returned as a monthly or annual payment to every American household. This would protect low and middle class Americans from the rising consumer costs associated with the carbon fee. This idea is known as a carbon fee and dividend (CF&D).
CCL's proposal would start the fee at US$15 per ton of equivalent ( cent per pound) and rise $10 per ton each year ( cent per pound). The fee would continue to rise until total US equivalent emissions have been reduced to 10% of US equivalent emissions in 1990. To protect US businesses from competition from other countries that do not have carbon pricing mechanisms, a border adjustment would be enacted. Similar to the Montreal Protocol, goods coming from countries without a carbon price would be subjected to a fee at the border. Goods leaving the US for sale in a country without a carbon price would be reimbursed that fee at the border. In addition, all existing subsidies of fossil fuels, including tax credits, would be phased out over the five years following enactment.
On September 1, 2016, the California State Legislature passed a measure that urges the United States Congress to enact a tax on carbon-based fossil fuels. The proposal is revenue-neutral, with all money collected going to the bottom two-thirds of American households. So while the resolution is framed as a tax, it is in fact a carbon fee and dividend scheme.
Emeritus professor Henry Jacoby again argued for the CF&D concept in a Guardian article in early 2021.
Model policy in Canada The Canadian province of British Columbia enacted a revenue-neutral carbon tax in 2008. The British Columbia carbon tax enabled so called "carbon funded tax cuts" because the revenue, instead of being returned as a dividend, is used to offset corporate and personal income taxes. In 2015, a review of British Columbia's emissions found that they had fallen 16% since 2008, while economic activity outperformed the rest of Canada. The policy has been called "popular across the political spectrum" and been considered a model for policies in other states and countries.
Proposed measure in Washington In 2016, a group called CarbonWA, allied but unaffiliated with the Citizens Climate Lobby, submitted a carbon pricing measure to the ballot in the state of Washington. The initiative, known as Washington Initiative 732, would impose a steadily rising fee on emissions of carbon dioxide, and use that revenue to offset the state's sales tax, business tax, and to expand the state's version of the earned income tax credit.
Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act
On November 27, 2018, Climate Solutions Caucus members Representatives Ted Deutch (D-FL), Francis Rooney (R-FL), Charlie Crist (D-FL), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and John Delaney (D-MD) introduced the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (HR 7173). A few days later, a companion Senate bill was introduced by Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ).
The bill was reintroduced into the 116th Congress under the same name as HR 763. In 2021, it was reintroduced into the 117th United States Congress as H.R.2307. If passed, a national carbon fee and dividend would be implemented similar to that described above.
Economic basis for action Shultz was former secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan. Gary Becker is a Nobel laureate economist and economics professor at the University of Chicago. Greg Mankiw was Mitt Romney's former economic adviser. Nicholas Stern is chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and also chair of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (CCCEP) at Leeds University and LSE. Shi-Ling Hsu is the D'Alemberte Professor and Associate Dean for Environmental Programs, Florida State University College of Law.
Economist and law professor Shi-Ling Hsu also supports a revenue-neutral carbon tax. In his book The Case for a Carbon Tax, Getting Past our Hangups to Effective Climate Policy and in his talks, he explains the economics of carbon pricing and why he believes that putting a price on carbon in the form of a carbon tax is more effective and efficient than cap and trade or command and control style legislation.
Stern Review 2006
Economist Nicholas Stern also supports putting a price on carbon as explained in his Stern Review. The Stern Review is significant in that it is the largest and most widely known and discussed economic report on climate change of its kind. Entitled Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, this 700-page report was released for the British government on October 30, 2006. In it, Stern discusses the effect of global warming on the world economy, and states that climate change is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen, presenting a unique challenge for economics. According to the Stern Review, without action, the overall costs of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global gross domestic product (GDP) each year, now and forever. The Review provides prescriptions including environmental taxes to minimize the economic and social disruptions. The Stern Review's main conclusion is that the benefits of strong, early action on climate change far outweigh the costs of not acting. Some of the report's main conclusions are:
The benefits of strong, early action on climate change outweigh the costs. The scientific evidence points to increasing risks of serious, irreversible impacts from climate change associated with business-as-usual (BAU) paths for emissions. Climate change threatens the basic elements of life for people around the world – access to water, food production, health, use of land and the environment. The impacts of climate change are not evenly distributed – the poorest countries and people will suffer earliest and most. And if and when the damages appear it will be too late to reverse the process. Thus we are forced to look a long way ahead. Emissions have been, and continue to be, driven by economic growth; yet stabilization of greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere is feasible and consistent with continued growth. Establishing a carbon price, through tax, trading or regulation, is an essential foundation for climate change policy. There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change if strong collective action starts now.
Energy Modeling Forum study 2012