The founding members of the Conservative Leadership Council, including major oil companies, corporations, thought leaders, and policy makers, ran a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal calling for consensus climate policy based on free enterprise mechanisms. Concurrently, former Secretary of State George Shultz and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers co-wrote a piece published in the Washington Post, This is the One Climate Solution That’s Best for the Environmentand for Business.
The ad calls for a carbon dividend based on four pillars: a gradually increasing, revenue neutral carbon tax; a dividend payment to all Americans; rollback of the existing regulator structure; and border carbon adjustments to ensure American competitiveness. This plan would, in the words of Shultz and Summers, “strengthen the U.S. economy in ways highly valued by both the left and right and simultaneously spur global efforts to address climate change. Adopting a carbon dividend approach would pay huge dividends for the global climate, the U.S. economy and U.S. leadership in the world.”
The CLC was founded by Ted Halstead earlier this year. Ad signers include: BP, ExxonMobil, Johnson & Johnson, GM and Shell.