On Tuesday, Oxnard’s City Council should endorse the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act
To support their resolution, you can send an email and/or sign up for public comment by Tuesday at 3PM.
It’s crunch time on climate. Meeting President Biden’s goal of halving carbon emissions by 2030 would help us avert extreme global warming and demonstrate American leadership heading into the UN Climate Change Conference in two weeks, but we need legislative action to make it happen. And with the Clean Electricity Performance Program reportedly off the table in reconciliation negotiations, a corporate polluter fee is the only policy left that gives us a shot of even approaching those goals.
We all have a role to play in encouraging Congress to put a price on carbon emissions. While reconciliation is where the action is, legislation signals support and unity. Here in Oxnard, we can thank Senator Dianne Feinstein for cosponsoring the Save Our Future Act, which includes a carbon price, and ask Senator Alex Padilla to join her and eight other Democratic senators in cosponsoring the only carbon pricing legislation in the Senate. We can also call on Representative Julia Brownley to join 86 of her House colleagues in cosponsoring H.R. 2307, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, the bill we champion at Citizens’ Climate Lobby.
On Tuesday, the Oxnard City Council has an opportunity to amplify our individual voices by endorsing H.R. 2307. If they vote for the resolution on their agenda (see the text at the bottom of this post), they would become the 28th local government in California to do so. We’d most immediately follow the city of Santa Barbara, which endorsed the legislation in August, applauding Representative Salud Carbajal for his outspoken endorsement of H.R. 2307.
They should do so. By incentivizing all sectors of our economy to decarbonize, a corporate polluter fee would fill gaps of other policies and a strong enough one would enable us to meet our climate goals. It would also avert over four million deaths from air pollution in the next 50 years. And by rebating the revenue as a dividend, it would make low-income people financially better off and reduce the poverty rate nationwide.
Oxnard residents would disproportionately benefit from a corporate polluter fee-and-dividend policy. Thanks to California’s mild climate, the antipoverty impact of a carbon dividend exceeds the national average by 40%; a dividend funded by the $15 per ton carbon tax that Congress is reportedly considering would cut deep child poverty by 5% in the first year alone, and even more as the price rises over time. Since California has the worst air quality in the country, especially in low-income communities like parts of Oxnard, we have a lot to gain from policies that clean our air. It’s no wonder that 70% of Ventura County residents support a carbon tax, and other polling indicates that distributing the revenue as a dividend increases support further.
In 2018, then-Supervisor John Zaragoza voted for a resolution at the Ventura County Board of Supervisors to “expeditiously enact a revenue neutral carbon tax to combat global warming.” Ventura County has adopted that language in its federal legislative platform each year since. Now as Mayor of Oxnard, Zaragoza has the chance to join Councilmember Gabe Teran, who introduced the resolution, as well as the Greater Oxnard Organization of Democrats and thousands of organizations across the country. Councilmembers Bryan MacDonald, Bert Perello, Oscar Madrigal, Gabriela Basua, and Vianey Lopez should also seize this opportunity to demonstrate our city’s leadership on the national scale while delivering concrete benefits to Oxnard residents’ lives — in their environment and their pocketbook.
To ask the Oxnard City Council to support this resolution, please email them and/or sign up to give public comment at the meeting by Tuesday at 3PM.
RESOLUTION OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF OXNARD URGING THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS TO ENACT THE ENERGY INNOVATION AND CARBON DIVIDEND ACT OF 2021
WHEREAS, the Oxnard City Council recognizes the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions; and
WHEREAS, the City of Oxnard is threatened by climate change impacts such as destabilized weather patterns, rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and other serious impacts; and
WHEREAS, the City of Oxnard, is preparing a Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, demonstrating the City Council’s commitment to improving the climate; and
WHEREAS, the City of Oxnard recognizes the need for national legislation to leverage what the City is doing and coordinate private, municipal, state and federal actions across the country; and
WHEREAS, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2021 fulfills the Oxnard City Council’s endorsement of a Carbon Fee and Dividend and request for members of Congress to support a Carbon Fee and Dividend.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Oxnard City Council urges Congress to enact without delay the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2021.
On Tuesday, Oxnard’s City Council should endorse the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act was originally published in Citizens’ Climate Lobby — Ventura County on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.