Cap and dividend is a simple, market-based way to reduce CO2 emissions without reducing household incomes. It caps fossil fuel supplies, makes polluters pay, and returns the revenue to everyone equally.

1. It gets the job done.
2. It’s simple.
3. It’s fair.
4. It’s progressive.
5. It’s market-based.

LATEST NEWS

The Economist likes Cantwell-Collins

From the The Economist, February 4, 2010.

Maria Cantwell, the junior senator from Washington state, is pushing a simpler, more voter-friendly version of cap-and-trade, called “cap-and-dividend”. Under her bill, the government would impose a ceiling on carbon emissions each year. Producers and importers of fossil fuels will have to buy permits. The permits would be auctioned, raising vast sums of money. Most of that money would be divided evenly among all Americans. The bill would raise energy prices, of course, and therefore the price of everything that requires energy to make or distribute. But a family of four would receive perhaps $1,000 a year, which would more than make up for it, reckons Ms Cantwell...

Of all the bills that would put a price on carbon, cap-and-dividend seems the most promising. (A carbon tax would be best of all, but has no chance of passing.) Ms Cantwell has a Republican co-sponsor, Susan Collins of Maine, and says she is hearing positive noises from a few other Republicans, such as Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. The most attractive thing about the bill is that it is honest. To discourage the use of dirty energy, it says, it has to be more expensive. To make up for that, here’s a thousand bucks.

David Morris: Instead of cap and trade, cap and dividend

A new and vastly improved climate change policy has come out of nowhere to capture the imagination of state and national policymakers: "Cap and dividend." It works like this: Step one, impose a carbon cap. Step two, auction off all carbon allowances. Step three, return the revenues generated to all households on a per capita basis.

Why Cantwell-Collins Is Best — And How It Just Might Win
Peter Barnes

As U.S. climate legislation creeps forward, Senators now have two frameworks to choose from. One is from Senators John Kerry, Joseph Lieberman and Lindsey Graham; the other is from Senators Maria Cantwell and Susan Collins. Both begin with descending carbon caps that, along with supplementary policies, promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at roughly the same rate, and both protect domestic industries by imposing fees on carbon-intensive imports from countries that don’t limit emissions. But from there the two approaches diverge markedly.

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