Eighty-one percent of likely votersincluding 65 percent of Republicans polledthink the government should take action on climate change, according to a survey commissioned by the Climate Leadership Council (CLC) and conducted by Hill+Knowlton Strategies. A majority of Americans support a carbon dividend plan, such as the one outlined by former Republican Secretaries of State George Shultz and James A. BakerL and millennial voters support the plan by more than a 4-to-1 margin, with support from millennials identifying as a Republican nearly the same as those identifying as a Democrat.
Also released today by the CLC, the report Exceeding Paris, drafted by Shultz, former EPA Administrator and New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, former chair of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen, and others. Yellen and CLC founder Ted Halstead also penned an op-edThe Most Ambitious Climate Plan in Historyin today’s edition of Fortune.
“All Obama-era climate regulations, had they remained in place, would have achieved approximately 18 percent in greenhouse gas reductions by 2025, according to the council’s analysis. In comparison, the Baker-Shultz plan would achieve an approximately 32 percent reduction by 2025, thereby exceeding our Paris commitment [26-28 percent] by a wide margin,” reads the op-ed. The authors call the Baker-Shultz plan “the most politically viable” option because it “addresses the legitimate concerns of all key stakeholders in the climate debate and enables each to realize an important victory.”
“We can sweep away some of the regulation and inspection that industry finds burdensome,” Whitman, who led former President George W. Bush’s EPA, said of the plan. “When you look at the business opportunity here, it’s impressive.”
A broad coalition of business sector leaders supports the general outlines of the plan and each is a founding member of the CLC, including oil and gas giants BP, ExxonMobil, and Shell, as well as AT&T, Exelon, General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, Metlife, Procter & Gamble, and PepsiCo.