Earth Day and the Bay
Earth Day, celebrated every year on April 22, has historically cultivated broad political and cultural alignments. The first Earth Day in 1970 brought U.S. Republicans and Democrats together in a joint effort to protect the environment, and by year’s end, lawmakers created the Environmental Protection Agency and passed the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts. Earth Day 1990 boosted recycling efforts worldwide and paved the way for the unprecedented 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which spawned the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCC).
Today, every country in the world is a signatory to the UNFCC’s Paris Climate Agreement, which aims to limiting global warming to less than two degrees Celsius. However, America has announced its intent to withdraw from the pact, and the EPA recently initiated the process to repeal the Clean Power Plan, one of the strongest actions taken by the U.S. to confront climate change. Furthermore, there is limited political agreement in the U.S. that human-caused climate change is a threat despite consensus among federal agencies and 97% of peer-reviewed science. This could have dire consequences in the near future, particularly for the Bay Area.
According to a legal complaint that San Mateo County filed against Chevron, et al. in pursuit of damages and other relief from sea level rise, there is a 93% chance that the county will experience a devastating three-foot flood before the year 2050, and a 50% chance that such a flood will occur before 2030. Flood risks for neighborhoods and cities built on landfill around the bay, such as Treasure Island and Foster City, are exacerbated by sinking land, while bayside properties in San Jose and Santa Clara Counties, including Facebook’s new campus, are projected to be below sea level by 2100 if significant action isn’t taken to mitigate climate change.
In light of these risks, counties are considering options to protect, elevate or move critical infrastructure. Restoration of wetlands has begun around the Bay Area to help dissipate wave energy during storm surges, and planning codes require new construction in at-risk areas to account for up to 66 inches of sea level rise. However, these initiatives only provide short-term protection. Sea level rise is accelerating, and even if we stop emitting greenhouse gases now, the earth could continue to warm for centuries.
Fortunately, there exists an effective policy solution for confronting climate change that has support across the political spectrum: Carbon Fee and Dividend. In this market-based approach, an annually rising fee is placed on fossil fuels at the point where they first enter the economy and the proceeds are returned equally to households. The dividend shields low and middle income Americans from price increases, while the increased cost of fuels encourages consumers and businesses to switch to products that have a smaller carbon footprint. When coupled with a border adjustment fee on imports of fossil fuels from countries without an equivalent price on carbon, the policy provides a financial incentive for our trade partners to enact one of their own (so that then, they can keep the revenue). If our trade partners respond by enacting an equivalent carbon fee, limiting global warming to an increase of two degree Celsius becomes feasible.
Climate change will affect us all regardless of political affiliation, so working together to implement a solution is a no-brainer. This Earth Day, we should embrace the bipartisanship and policy-influencing momentum that the day has traditionally engendered and demand action from Congress.
