Indiana Senator Dan Coats is one of the signers of a letter claiming that regulations now being drafted by the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas pollution from power plants will hurt the poor.
If Senator Coats is concerned about the poor, he should support extension of unemployment benefits and an increase in the minimum wage.
Climate change will affect the poor even more severely than it affects everyone else. Who lives on marginal land, suffers most from rising food prices, lacks health care and is most subject to newly virulent epidemics? Who will lose their jobs when climate refugees from coastal regions around the world flood into our cities and towns?
The world seems virtually certain to reach a climate tipping point. Nations and regions which have avoided the energy transition will be left behind, just as Detroit automakers were after they refused for years to build fuel efficient cars.
The President is working through EPA regulations because Congress has failed to offer a credible alternative. Senator Coats should support a revenue-neutral carbon tax and dividend as the most efficient way to cut emissions and accelerate the shift to renewable energy. This shift offers tremendous economic opportunities. Green industries and smart conservation create far more jobs per dollar invested than do capital-intensive coal and nuclear plants.
Members of Congress need to remember the most underrepresented of all groups: the generations that follow us.
References
“Senator Blunt, Colleagues Call On President Obama To Stop Punishing Most Vulnerable Americans With Higher Utility Bills” (Roy Blunt)
“Revenue-Neutral Carbon Tax” (Citizens Climate Lobby)
