U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper still has high hopes of putting a price on carbon and safeguarding public lands in Colorado. 

The Democratic Senate freshman from Denver had hoped to include a tax on carbon in President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better stimulus package. He holds out that hope, Hickenlooper told constituents in a virtual town hall Thursday evening.

“We are still discussing the reconciliation bill, and we’ve been close a couple times in the negotiations to having a price on carbon included in that bill,” he said. “If you think about it, the idea would be there’d be a fee for ton of carbon emissions.”

That would give companies that pollute – from automakers, steel mills, energy producers or fertilizer plants – an incentive to emit less to avoid paying into a fund that helps fight climate change.

The oil and gas industry this year, for the first time, said it would support a carbon tax, as producers move to aggressively cut their emissions.

“Emitting these harmful pollutants cost exactly nothing, despite the harm that is caused,” Hickenlooper said. “I think putting a price on carbon is necessary. It’s the only way that we’re gonna bring a market economy to bear and really incentivize and motivate people to find different ways of living a high-quality life without creating so many carbon emissions.”

A roadblock for the Build Back Better plan has been two Democratic senators whose vote is critical. Hickenlooper said he’s lobbied both Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

“I think it’s a fair way to say I’ve tried everything,” Hickenlooper said. “I had a long conversation with Joe Manchin this weekend and was texting him at some length this morning.”

He added: “I talked to Sen. Sinema I guess Friday or Monday. They’re being very cautious.”

Hickenlooper said earlier, “I’m pushing hard for us to go big on climate in our Build Back Better bill.”

On another environmental front, Hickenlooper noted the Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy Act, which would protect more than 400,000 acres of public lands in the state, including 31,000 acres of wilderness.

“That way Colorado can inherit both a thriving, outdoor recreation economy and all the jobs that come with that, as well as maintaining a pristine outdoor environment (and) beautiful outdoor spaces,” he said.

The CORE Act passed the House in February and Hickenlooper presented the legislation to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests and Mining in June.

Hickenlooper is sponsoring the bill with Sen. Michael Bennet of Denver and Rep. Joe Neguse of Lafayette. Bennet and Neguse have been working on the legislation since 2019, though the first two years Republicans were in charge of the chamber. The bill was not supported by Hickenlooper’s predecessor, Republican Sen. Cory Gardner of Yuma. Gardner pointed it also wasn’t backed by then-Rep. Scott Tipton of Cortez, whose Western Slope district includes many of the public lands cited in the bill.

“I don’t think it’s a matter of if it gets signed into law,” Hickenlooper said Thursday. “I think it’s just a matter of when. I think we’ll get there. Certainly the entire Congress in both the House and the Senate are very clearly (expressing) what a good project this is.”

Hickenlooper also used his final virtual town hall meeting of the year Thursday night to reflect on his first 12 months in Congress.

“It feels like it just started yesterday,” he told viewers, noting his first day was Jan. 6, “a day of infamy” because of the riots over whether the 2020 election was stolen from then-President Donald Trump.

As highlights he cited:

• Pandemic relief, including tax cuts for working families, vaccine distribution and a restaurant relief fund. “The rescue plan was a no-brainer,” he said of stimulus spending.
• Cutting premiums from health care insurance exchanges.
• Introducing legislation to make Camp Amache in Prowers County a national park.
• Passing at $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill to fix roads, bridges, airports, ports and more, including expanding access to high-speed internet.
• Introducing a bill to make electric vehicles more affordable.
• Pressing to end the filibuster so that Democrats can pass voting rights protections.
• Protecting abortion rights. “It’s obvious to most of us that a woman’s health care decision should be made by her in consultation with her doctor – period end of story,” Hickenlooper said.