STUDENT GOVERNMENT LEADERS’ STATEMENT ON CARBON DIVIDENDS

The climate threat is one of the greatest challenges of our generation. It transcends virtually every other issue because it threatens the basic building blocks of our security and prosperity, and with it, the American way of life. While the precise effects of climate instability remain uncertain, the risks are too grave to ignore.

This is why we are stepping forward today—as the foremost student leaders at America’s colleges and universities—to endorse the breakthrough, bipartisan climate solution known as carbon dividends.

The carbon dividends framework has earned truly record-breaking support. In 2019, more than 3,500 US economists—from all 50 states and virtually every major college and university in the country—united in support of the solution. It became the largest statement of economists in the history of the profession.

Signatories of the “Economists’ Statement on Carbon Dividends” include every living former Federal  Reserve Chair, as well as 28 Nobel Prize-winners—the largest number to endorse any policy on any topic, ever. Supporters also include 15 former Chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers, representing Presidential administrations on both sides of the aisle over the last half century.

To this unprecedented show of force, we now add our own. We, the undersigned college and university student body presidents and leaders, join this historic coalition of economists and opinion leaders in uniting behind the four pillars of this breakthrough solution:

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1.A steadily rising price on carbon to spur clean energy innovation and drive emissions reductions

2.Carbon dividend rebates to ensure revenue-neutrality and benefit American families

3.The streamlining of carbon regulations that are no longer necessary

4.Border-carbon adjustments to level the playing field for American workers and businesses and hold other countries accountable

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This win-win proposal is built upon bedrock principles of economics and would succeed in delivering far greater emissions reductions than all previous policies combined. It would promote US leadership and unleash American innovation toward a cleaner and more prosperous future. While there are complementary policies to consider, the carbon dividends framework has emerged as a cornerstone solution. Our economics professors, in a historic groundswell of support, have coalesced around this concrete climate strategy, and we are now carrying the torch forward.

As young people, with decades of life ahead, we are clear-eyed about what climate disruption means for our generation. That’s why we recognize the power of a consensus solution like carbon dividends to bridge partisan divides, protect our shared environment, and strengthen the economy. Where our political leaders have been unwilling, or unable, to forge agreement around common-sense solutions, we on college campuses are showing them how it’s done.