Currently, Congress is working out policy details for inclusion in the budget reconciliation. Climate legislation is to be included in some form. Now is the time to push for the most efficient means to mitigate climate change: a price on carbon.

Today, 44 countries practice some method of national carbon pricing, in fact, of the world’s developed economies, only the U.S. and Australia do not have some form of a nationwide carbon fee. Our economic day of reckoning may come in 2023 when the E.U. plans to institute its carbon border adjustment. This component of carbon pricing taxes energy intensive imports from countries without a similar carbon price. Wouldn’t it make more sense to catch up with other forward thinking nations instead of being penalized?

In March, the American Petroleum Institute, our nation’s largest trade group for the oil and gas industry, endorsed carbon pricing as a preferable market based policy that will foster innovation and technological advances in the effort to mitigate climate change. According to the IMF, a carbon tax policy will grow the economy and increase employment.

The West is experiencing an ongoing historic drought, the lower Colorado river system is at forty percent capacity. Lakes Mead and Powell, on which millions of people depend on for water, are at record low capacity. In May, California’s budget proposal included two billion dollars, just for wildfire mitigation.

What are we waiting for?

Andrea Storrs, Divide