Rick Cutler
Climate Action Liaison for Spencer Organ Company
Last week, CALC representatives attended a series of forums on the proposed carbon tax here in Massachusetts. The proposed legislation is being sponsored by Senator Michael Barrett and Representative Tom Conroy. The legislators teamed up with Environmental Tax Reform – Massachusetts, a fairly new organization founded specifically to focus on enacting a carbon fee within the Commonwealth.
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ETR – MA, created and headed by Jessica Langerman, recently held multiple open forums at the Statehouse. These forums were organized to reintroduce a report from Regional Economic Models, Inc (REMI). The economic study was meant to discern the effects of a carbon tax on the Massachusetts state economy.
The Committee for Green Economy originally commissioned the REMI report , which CALC was also a supporting organization. The REMI study was first presented at a large open forum at the Statehouse last June. The idea this time around was to invite a wide variety of organizations to hear the results, but over the course of several days so the groups could be smaller and much more interactive.
Between February 10th and 12th, union representatives, members from the MA Budget & Policy Center, business organizations, the electric power industry, environmental groups, economists, and members of the religious community met with ETR-MA and Scott Nystrom from REMI (the co-author of the study).
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The study essentially demonstrates that a fee on carbon emissions, properly structured and implemented, will not harm the economy as many surmise. In fact, for Massachusetts, there would be an increase, albeit small, in economic activity. (approximately 1% of total state GDP). More importantly, the resulting decrease in GHG emissions, (as much as 10% over 1990 emission levels), shows that carbon taxes are part of and one of the first easy steps to a transition away from fossil fuels to an efficient, renewable, and low carbon-footprint economy.
Going forward, ETR-MA will be working closely with both legislators and the varied organizations that attended the forums in order to keep the subject of a carbon fee front and center as we head into the next election cycle and beyond. The idea of the carbon tax has the apparent backing of scientific and economic research, and it is the one of the most pragmatic and sensible policies imagined to date.
