Over 2,500 economists, including eight Nobel laureates, have stated that market mechanisms like charging polluters can reduce greenhouse gas emissions without harming U.S. living standards and may even improve productivity. Charging polluters will create a dedicated revenue source to protect those most vulnerable to climate change itself and resulting fossil fuel price increases. Even using the most pessimistic estimates of the impacts of fossil fuel price increases, about two-thirds of the pollution revenue could completely compensate and retrain displaced workers, balance declines in wage growth, and recoup investor loss. She points out that researchers and economists not funded by the coal industry found that the U.S. can reduce emissions even beyond Kyoto levels with a net savings in energy costs and an improvement in U.S. productivity. For instance, the Tellus Institute estimates that nearly 900,000 jobs would be created out of the adoption of fair climate policies.
Climate change poses one of the greatest moral challenges humanity has ever faced.
Until the moral dimensions of climate change are made more evident, the policies now being framed will fall short of what is needed to care for people and the planet. Redefining Progress is a nonpartisan nonprofit policy research organization that seeks to ensure a more sustainable and socially equitable world. RP asserts the moral responsibility and fiscal sense of addressing the needs of people and nature in growing the economy. RP advocates the development of accurate monetary and nonmonetary indicators of social and economic well being, as well as incentive-based policies that will stimulate genuine progress.