Washington, DC – Today, prominent Republicans and business leaders are presenting a plan to confront climate change by placing a fee on carbon emissions. The group, the Climate Leadership Council, is unveiling its plan at the National Press Club and presenting it to White House officials. Members of the Council include top former Republican cabinet appointees Henry M. Paulson, Jr., James A. Baker, III, and George P. Schultz.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and a Co-Chair of the Senate Climate Action Task Force, praised the proposal, which is similar to legislation he has introduced in the Senate. Whitehouse released the following statement:
“This impressive group of Republican cabinet members and presidential economic advisers shows how bipartisan progress on climate change is possible outside the electoral shadow of the fossil fuel industry’s political bullying. These leaders join a long list of conservative economists who have for years pointed to a carbon fee as an elegant, efficient way to address carbon pollution and generate growth. But since Citizens United, Republicans in Congress are in a fossil fuel industry political chokehold. Not too long ago, Donald Trump and his children said the science of climate change was ‘irrefutable’ and its consequences ‘catastrophic and irreversible’; today’s announcement highlights a path for the Trumps to get out of the Koch brothers’ shadow and revert to the understanding they once held. It also gives former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, now Secretary of State, the chance to make his claims to support a carbon fee something more than lip service.”
Whitehouse and Senator Brian Schatz’s (D-HI) American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act, which was introduced in the last two Congresses, would assess a fee on major sources of greenhouse gases.
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