The kindest and quickest way to protect our climate.
It’s time to think big about the climate.
We’re thinking big by asking our government to step in and fix the threat to our liveable world.
The biggest threat is burning fossil fuels for energy.
When we burn fossil fuels (in power plants, in our cars and to heat our homes, to make things) we produce too many greenhouse gases.
This has warmed the climate to disasterous levels.
So we are lobbying for this: carbon fee and dividend.
Carbon fee and dividend in three steps:
- The fee – a fee is charged on fossil fuels when they are mined, extracted or imported into the UK. (The fee rises steadily, each year)
- The dividend – the fee is divided up between UK citizens, equally.
- The border adjustment – to protect UK business, the fee is refunded when fossil fuels are exported out of the country.
“You never change things by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.”
Richard Buckminster Fuller
How it works
Carbon fee and dividend prices fossil fuels out of our economy.
In other words, clean energy – energy which doesn’t come from burning stuff – will become cheaper, and people and businesses will move away from burning fossil fuels.
But while investors and businesses create more, affordable, alternatives to burning fossil fuels, it is inevitable that people will, for a time, be stuck with the high cost of fossil fuels.
The dividend protects citizens from this price rise, especially low and middle income households because they don’t buy so many things, and don’t run big cars and houses, and fly infrequently.
Carbon fee and dividend won’t fix all the threats to our climate, but studies have shown it will make a substantial contribution – reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent in a few years.
Protecting UK business
Carbon fee and dividend protects our economy while tackling climate change effectively.
The ‘border adjustment’ ensures that imported goods and exported goods are on the same playing field.
The border adjustment also encourages other countries to adopt a carbon fee because, while they don’t have a fee, they’ll be giving their money to the UK. (Foreign businesses won’t be charged if their country has already charged them a carbon fee.)
Why do fossil fuels continue to provide most of our energy? … Fossil fuels are the cheapest energy. This is in part due to their marvellous energy density and the infrastructure that has grown up around them. But… Effects of air and water pollution on human health are borne by us… Damages from climate change…will be borne especially by our children and grandchildren.
– James Hansen, leading climate scientist and former director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and advocate of carbon fee and dividend
How we lobby
Citizens’ Climate Lobby is a UK organisation with networks across the world.
Visit this page for our five levers of political will for a liveable world.
Visit this page for CCL values.
Want to know more about carbon fee and dividend?
Visit this Frequently Asked Questions to go into more depth.
Together we can tell our government Carbon Fee and Dividend is the kindest and quickest way to bring down greenhouse gases and stop contributing to climate change.
Together we can create the political will the world needs.