Through decades of deception and political interference, Big Polluters fueled, and have profited mightily from, the climate crisis. Big Polluters should pay for just solutions to mitigate and respond to its effects.
That’s the case Corporate Accountability’s Executive Director Patti Lynn makes in an Op-Ed that just got published in The Hill.
Specifically, that Big Polluters like Exxon, Shell, and BP should pay for the Green New Deal, a bold and exciting vision that is a promising starting place for what true U.S. climate leadership could and should look like. It calls for a rapid drawdown of greenhouse gas emissions, the provision of millions of well-paying jobs, and the advancement of equity and justice for communities on the front lines of climate change, and more.
Making Big Polluters pay is a practical and profoundly fair idea, and we need your help to make sure members of Congress hear about and include it in the Green New Deal as it moves forward. Will you write to your members of Congress and urge them to support making Big Polluters pay for the Green New Deal?
Making the fossil fuel industry pay for initiatives like this is the most just option for funding the real solutions we need for the climate crisis. If it sounds big, it is… and it also has a powerful precedent. In 1998, Big Tobacco and state attorneys general of 46 states, five U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia all signed the Master Settlement Agreement. It requires the tobacco industry to pay billions of dollars each year to address the public health epidemic it caused — forever.
To be fair, the Green New Deal is a floor, not a ceiling for just climate leadership, and if solutions to the climate crisis like some of what is outlined in the Green New Deal are to succeed, they must address the fundamental root of our climate crisis — the fossil fuel industry. The entities that have knowingly led us to planetary disaster — and profited greatly from it — should foot the bill for reversing course and advancing truly just climate policies.
