Can students shake-up environmental debate, and push proposal for a carbon marketplace" U.S. students have recently become more active and outspoken in the political arena. This morning, a new group of young Americans has taken up the cause of carbon mitigation and climate change: Republican groups on college campuses.
The Students for Carbon Dividends (S4CD), a coalition of student groups launched earlier today, features student voices from across the partisan spectrum, including 23 College Republican clubs, 6 Democratic clubs, and 5 environmental groups from schools across the country. The inclusion of Republican voices in the climate-change discussion offers some hope of future bipartisan cooperation on an issue that currently divides most lawmakers along party lines. This new coalition believes they have unique credibility to demand action on the issue.
?We will articulate to our nation?s decision makers that we, the generation most affected by the threat of climate instability, want this concrete, effective, and sensible climate solution,? S4CD said in a release.
The group is advocating what?s known as the Baker-Shultz Plan, a comprehensive proposal to create a gradually rising, and revenue-neutral, carbon tax that would create dividend payments shared by all Americans. The plan would include a tax on carbon emissions, starting at something like $40 a ton, that would gradually rise and encourage companies to switch to cleaner, renewable energy sources. T...