PRG co-founder George Frampton has been invited to be part of a September 13 forum on carbon taxes at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco. He and other leaders, including Congressman Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), chief sponsor of a new carbon tax bill, will devote half a day to exploring ways to advance such legislation. “This will provide a great opportunity to explain why this free-market approach is the most powerful and most efficient option for combating the climate-related problems we face,” Frampton said.
Titled THE U.S. BUSINESS CASE FOR A CARBON TAX: Driving Innovation, Equity & Opportunity, this forum will seek to answer questions such as: 1) What kind of carbon tax is best for the economy and environment? 2) How should the revenues generated be used? 3) What’s most politically feasible and socially equitable? The forum runs from 1 to 5:30 p.m. PDT, and Frampton will take part in an examination of the national political landscape, set to go from 3:15 to 3:55 p.m. Gap, Inc. will host the carbon tax event at its corporate headquarters, 2 Folsom Street, and it is open to the public.
Other invitees include U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI); Massachusetts State Senator Mike Barrett (D), sponsor of his state’s carbon fee bill; and representatives from Students For Carbon Dividends, The Nature Conservancy, R Street, Exelon, and ExxonMobil.
The summit will bring leaders and people together from around the world to “Take Ambition to the Next Level.” Organizers want to celebrate the achievements of states, regions, cities, companies, investors and citizens. They also will underline new and continuing efforts underway across the Summit’s five challenge areas: healthy energy systems, inclusive economic growth, sustainable communities, land and ocean stewardship, and climate investments toward the next milestone of “peaking” pollution worldwide by 2020 as a prelude to decarbonizing the global economy.
“The value and the beauty of the summit — a little bit of the magic, so to speak — is bringing all the non-state actors together to show what they can do and how much more they’re ready to do," Ceres CEO Mindy Lubber told Joel Makower, chairman and executive editor of GreenBiz Group. You can virtually attend the Global Summit by streaming it live on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
Makower, writing a summit preview for his website GreenBiz, also spoke with Mark Watts, executive director of C40, a network of the world’s largest cities committed to addressing climate change. "I think we’ve got over 30 mayors of major cities, which is a huge number for this kind of event to travel to San Francisco, who will be on stage announcing or explaining the commitments they’ve made across four major areas: energy; transport; waste management; and building energy efficiency," Watts said.
Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), Makower reported, is playing a leading role in making sure that the business community is well-represented across the entire summit "working closely with our six partners in the We Mean Business coalition," according to CEO Aron Cramer.
That involves sending two key messages, he told Makower. “The first is that climate action is good for business. It’s happening, and businesses are reorienting their models in order to shift to a low-carbon and ultimately a new zero economy by the middle of the century. And related to that is the business community sending a strong signal to policymakers that climate ambition on their part is important and that with the right policy frameworks, businesses can and will go even further in accelerating action on the road to a clean energy economy."
The summit’s list of high-profile speakers is impressive. Among them are former Secretary of State John Kerry; European Commissioner for Climate Change and Energy Miguel Arias Canete; former U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus; Canada’s Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna; former Secretary of State George Shultz; astronaut Mae Jemison; executives from McDonald’s, Walmart, Starbucks, and United Airlines; and the governors of New Jersey, Hawaii, Washington, Puerto Rico, and Connecticut.
The final months of 2018 will feature other important climate gatherings, reflecting the broad global determination to make progress. This year’s annual COP conference (COP24), organized by the UNFCCC, is December 3 to 14 in Katowice, Poland. Coming up later this month is Climate Week in New York, and from November 6 to 8, BSR is hosting “A New Blueprint for Business,” also in New York. There are others, as well.