Readers may recall a previous column describing a proposal to include an article endorsing a national climate policy on the warrant for Camden’s June town election (formerly annual town meeting).

As it turns out, the article won’t be on the June warrant, due to the Select Board’s requirement for a citizens’ petition with 331 signatures in very short order. November’s ballot is therefore the new target for this potential opportunity for Camden residents. So it seems worth discussing further as we switch to signature-gathering mode: Some day soon you may encounter a hopeful petition bearer seeking your signature!

To review, this initiative is about urging Congress to take some sort of big climate policy action as soon as possible. We all feel anxiety about the costly, destructive, depressing and moreover accelerating effects of planetary warming. More or less everyone with minimal awareness now concedes that today’s exaggerated greenhouse effect is largely due to the burning of ever more fossil fuels for the past 200 years. Most of us are at a point of serious frustration about what an individual can do to have any impact on this enormous problem. 

A very large number of economists of all stripes are in consensus on the view that the fossil fuel burning problem demonstrates a severe “market failure” — the underpricing of those fuels, such that their cost to the environment and to human health has not been reflected in their prices. When things are cheap, people buy a lot of them. The “negative externalities” from these underpriced goods — CO2 and methane pollution — are profuse: In this case, they are threatening life on the planet. It’s time to adjust their prices to reduce demand, reduce their pollution, and hopefully to slow the dangerous warming that is increasingly affecting our weather and its costly effects. 

Towns around the state have been passing “carbon cashback” resolutions in their annual town meetings or through their town councils for the past few years, and sending notice that they have done so to Congress, the Governor, and the President. These resolutions state that the town as a whole would like to see Congress pass national carbon pricing legislation that will reduce carbon dioxide emissions rapidly.

The policy mechanism of cashback carbon pricing involves a system of carbon fees that are charged to all producers of fossil fuels, based on the amount of CO2 their products potentially will emit. The fees will be paid by those producers as their products come onto the market. The fees will immediately be placed in a trust fund for the American people and disbursed to them on a regular basis, making the program “revenue-neutral.” As prices rise, industry will conserve and innovate, and the renewable fuel economy will develop more rapidly, with the result being a rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

This policy of cashback carbon pricing is embodied in legislation that’s been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in multiple successive sessions (The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act); there are also numerous other carbon pricing bills in and out of Congress, but this is the only one returning all the fees to the people, protecting their household budgets from rising prices.

A resolution by the people of Camden would send a signal to Rep. Chellie Pingree (who was incidentally an original co-sponsor of the Energy Innovation Act), and to Senators King and Collins, who are in very influential positions as members of the Senate Climate Solutions Caucus. These elected officials are in a position to do something on the national scale. But as you may have noticed, in order to do anything they seem to need to know they have constituent support. Is this why they have yet to take any bold climate action? Have our feelings of confusion and powerlessness kept us from letting them know we care?

By acting together and speaking with one voice, we can make a big impression on these big actors. Camden is pretty important, and it would be helpful for them to know of our support. We need their help to get something done on the scale that it needs to happen, but they need our help to do their job. Let’s get it before the Camden voters in November and see if we can give them a hand.

Cynthia Stancioff lives in Camden and is active with the national nonprofit, non-partisan, volunteer-driven Citizens Climate Lobby, which works to build political will for a livable planet. She can be reached at cynthia.hoeh@gmail.com.