Editor:

Regarding the column “Colorado’s collaboration on clean energy” that ran in the Colorado Statesman on August 24, the state’s clean energy economy has, indeed, seen remarkable growth over the past 12 years. But the energy default is still fossil fuels, and the deep pockets of some of the world’s biggest corporations are fighting to keep it that way.

Despite the impressive speed with which renewable energy has grown, global warming is increasing even faster. We are going to need more than uneven state-by-state efforts to avert “catastrophic” global warming according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Rather than using government regulations and subsides to create a clean energy development, we can use the market forces, which will be much more powerful and won’t cost consumers or taxpayers anything. In fact, a revenue-neutral carbon pollution fee can actually give middle-class and low-income Americans more disposable income every month and increase our GDP by $75-80 billion annually. In British Columbia such a pollution fee has slashed emissions while also cut people’s energy bills and taxes for eight years. And it has grown their economy faster than any other Canadian province (citizensclimatelobby.org).

The fee is paid by all fossil fuel producers and distributed to every taxpayer every month in equal amounts – check in the mail or direct deposit. The fee increases annually, and so do the carbon rebate checks, so people who use that money to buy cheaper, clean energy come out ahead financially.

A national clean energy economy will create over 5 million good-paying, permanent (40-year) jobs and save Americans 2 percent of our annual GDP, now spent on medical bills for carbon-caused illnesses annually, not to mention over 45,000 American lives now lost to carbon pollution on a yearly basis (Stanford University’s solutionsproject.org).

Carbon pricing can phase out fossil fuels, worldwide, within the next decade according to Newsweek, which is about all the time we have left to avert “global economic collapse” caused by climate change. Nature, the world’s most highly-cited peer-reviewed science journal, projects the future cost of climate change will be over $369 trillion if we continue burning fossil fuels.

We have a simple, proven, transparent, cost-free solution to climate change that will give us a better economy, better health, and it uses conservative economics. All we need is a Congress that’s willing to pass a revenue-neutral carbon pollution fee. Maybe next year.

Lynn GoldfarbDenver, CO