Barrett draws on Canadian experience to promote carbon fees State House News

“British Columbia, with its population of about 4.4 million people, first imposed a carbon tax in 2008 as part of the province’s climate action plan. By 2012, the province had hit its goal of reducing carbon emissions by 6 percent below 2007 levels at the same time that British Columbia’s population was growing and its gross domestic product climbed 9 percent.”

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With Mass. Off Track On Emissions Goal, Advocates Seek 1st State Carbon Tax WBUR

“This is carbon pricing,” State Senator Mike Barrett said, “and the idea is to make it a little more expensive to pollute, a little more expensive to buy something that results in the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — which is the greenhouse gas that causes climate change — make it a little more expensive to do all that, but then you send the money back so that you spend it on something less polluting.”

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Mass. can lead on greenhouse gas reduction Boston Globe

In the The Boston Globe, Mike Ross writes on my bill to combat climate change by pricing carbon:

“The idea of a lone state like Massachusetts getting out ahead of the rest of the country and leading a program of this magnitude might strike some as incredulous. But this is precisely what the Commonwealth has been doing on a host of issues — from marriage equality to health care. Being ahead of the curve is a good thing, especially when our future depends on it.”

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Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher The New York Times

Well, well. Things just got a little hotter for a recipient of funding to belittle climate change.

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2014 Breaks Heat Record, Challenging Global Warming Skeptics The New York Times

This just in.  Yikes.  For the urgent consideration of the new Mass. Legislature, I’m proposing “An Act Combatting Climate Change.”  Pollution and health are huge expenses excluded from the prices of “fossil fuels” like coal, oil and natural gas; the taxpayer gets whacked with the expense later on.  If you want to reduce emissions, clean the air and cool the planet, ask us Mass. state legislators to go where British Columbia has already gone — to honest full pricing for fossil fuels.

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Climate Change Threatens to Strip the Identity of Glacier National Park The New York Times

One of my favorite National Parks sees its defining glories melting away. Time to put a “price on carbon” — to tax pollution.

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