Cap & Dividend will be back

Cap & Dividend will return.  I can’t prove it of course, but I’m willing to predict it, and this despite (unattributable) rumors that top US environmental strategy makers are “doubling down” on their old political calculations.

Why do I think so?   Just a feeling, but an educated one.  For one thing, Maria Cantwell, one of the two authors of 2009’s CLEAR act (the last legislative vehicle for Cap and Dividend), recently gave this speech at the Brookings Institution, and according to Mike Tidwell of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, it was spun by one of her top aides as a “soft launch” for a re-introduction of CLEAR.   Nothing definite, but something.

The other reason is that Cap and Dividend makes ethical and political sense, and I’m betting that ethical and political sense comes back into fashion in the not too distant future.  Seriously.   On this front, see a sharp little piece called The Climate Justice Imperative.   It’s by good-guy economist Jim Boyce.

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