Apr 15, 2018 3 min read

In response to the April 8 letter, “State can’t maximize energy resources with severance tax,” consider the source. The letter was written by the president of Steel Nation, a corporation which is closely tied to the oil and gas industry. He argues that “the gas industry is already taxed. Companies pay impact taxes on wells that have generated more than $1.5 billion in new revenue since 2012.”

What he doesn’t mention is that the fossil industry does over half a trillion in economic damage to the U.S. economy every year (Harvard Business Review). Climate change has cost U.S. taxpayers over $1.2 trillion, and those costs are rising sharply (NOAA, GAO). Natural gas likes to bill itself as “clean” energy, but its methane emissions make it as bad a greenhouse gas emitter as coal (Scientific American).

We need a lot more than a severance tax on fossil fuels. We need to tax them until they go out of business. This won’t cost consumers or taxpayers anything if we give all that tax money directly to the taxpayers. British Columbia has used this energy policy for almost 10 years now and they’ve cut their greenhouse gas emissions by a whopping 56 percent. They’ve also cut their personal and corporate tax rates and their energy prices while creating a thriving economy (The Economist).

The policy is called Carbon Fee and Dividend because fossil fuels pay the fee and every taxpayer gets that money in the form of monthly “carbon dividend” checks. In the United States, this policy would create millions of good jobs and increase our GDP over $1.3 trillion (citizensclimatelobby.org).

Clean energy is now fast-becoming as cheap or cheaper than any fossil fuel, worldwide, with storage costs included, and will out-compete oil, gas and coal worldwide within the next two years (WEF, Forbes, Lazard). Solar/wind prices will drop at least 50 to 70 percent more (DOE, bloomberg.org), so switching to clean energy will mean Americans will make a bigger profit every year as the fee increases annually and their dividends go up correspondingly.

Solar and wind are clearly the economic winners, but we need to transition to clean energy before we’re overtaken by “catastrophic” climate change. At present, we’re moving 10 times too slowly (MIT.edu). Only Carbon Fee and Dividend offers the realistic possibility of achieving the transition to clean energy in time and making other nations match as well. See how it works at the Citizens Climate Lobby website.

Pete Kuntz

Lancaster