 Good afternoon, Howard Wade, Code Green, Sintek, Hawai'i. It gives me great pleasure this afternoon to bring to the table Jeffrey King, Hawai'i coordinator for the Citizens Climate Lobby and you think I've had some interesting guests here before? Wait until you hear what Jeffrey is proposing for us. Jeffrey, you're a local boy, aren't you? No, I'm actually originally from Chicago, a little over two years ago. Okay, from Chicago that explains your extreme high-poweredness. You're not exactly a local guy. And when he's not doing Citizens Climate Lobby work, which of course commands a huge salary, that's a small token, he is a jazz musician, my goodness. And he's looking for some other line of work down the road maybe, but yeah. Anyway, talk about an interesting fellow. Now what Jeffrey is proposing to do is nothing short of drastically dropping the amount of carbon that we put into the atmosphere. I hand that, of course, as full of CO2, the greenhouse gas, and so forth, so forth. You are a sophisticated audience, I don't need to go on. So welcome, Jeffrey, and we have so much to cover. Let's just jump right into it and explain first what Citizens Climate Lobby is all about. Thanks, Howard. Sounds good. So yeah, real quick, Citizens Climate Lobby is a non-profit, non-partisan national organization whose mission is to address climate change in the most effective way that we believe is possible, and that is through a proposal we call carbon fee and dividend. So other people might refer to this as a revenue-neutral carbon tax, though it is technically different because we are proposing a fee as opposed to a tax, and there is a technical difference between the two. But yeah, really briefly, a carbon fee and dividend would, one, put a steadily rising fee on ultimately carbon dioxide emissions, but that would translate into the individual user's language as basically fossil fuels. And this would be coal, oil, and natural gas. Yes, correct. So anything that emits carbon dioxide that is considered a fossil fuel. And then, you know, the main purpose of that is obviously to make, you know, basically fossil fuel usage is an investment unpopular, but more strategically, to be able to basically rapidly create demand for the renewable energy market. So, you know, as the price of fossil fuels go up higher and higher, you know, individuals and companies alike will be less and less inclined to invest in fossil fuels and, you know, basically find the alternative, whatever's going to be cheaper. So, yeah. And as we're going to see as we go through the slides, it's good for the economy also. Yeah, and that's kind of just to finish up the dividend portion is there to, number one, you know, ensure that nobody's going to be hurt during this transition from fossil fuels to renewables. So, you know, let's say like you spend an extra $50 on your tank for a month during this transition. You know, we'd make sure that you get at least $50 back in a check every month. So, yeah, that's kind of the basics of that. But yeah, I can go and explain later on how it will help the economy as well. Let's start you. You start off in your slides with a quiz here. What can we do about carbon change or climate change? And I'm pretty gosh darned authoritative. I would say go vegan. Actually, this isn't necessarily a quiz. It's just, you know, we just, you know, present the slide when we present because this is generally what we find on, you know, on Google searching and, you know, hear from others when we ask them, you know, what do you know about solutions you've heard in terms of climate, addressing climate change? And it generally comes down to these three as major ones. And yeah, and we, you know, we definitely support all of these actions. But for us, this is, you know, ultimately only individual action and to really address the climate crisis in the time we have left, which will be led into by our next slide. You know, we really need to take much more drastic action. Yeah, and we're, instead of individuals, we go get to the big boys here. So only about 36% of average American fossil fuel, some direct emissions, indirect the products we buy, like we looked at a vegan diet. We meet eaters by cow, and cow is a bit of a carbon emitter. Yeah, actually, that's more methane, but yeah, definitely greenhouse gases overall indeed. And yeah, and that last slide was, you know, up there to illustrate the point that we, you know, even if all of us did our part as individuals to, you know, reduce our carbon emissions as much as possible, there's still this other two thirds of the pie that's still left to be solved, you know, and that's basically, as it says, embedded in the products we buy through manufacturing, shipping, et cetera. So a lot of things we don't have direct control over. Yeah, and we don't think of it. We talk about resource efficiency, but it boils down to carbon efficiency also. Yes. Yeah. So what else do you have for us? There's just so much meaty thing. Oh, now this looks interesting. Trillion the ton dash org. Oh, what is going on here? Okay, so this is a website put on by Oxford University called trillionthton.org, and that's why it's spelled a little differently because it's a British site. But yeah, this is an estimate of how many tons of CO2 are being emitted into the air as we speak. And the reason they called it trillionth ton is because from their research, they believe that we'll hit the two-degree limit, which to put it casually is sort of a point of no return in terms of... This is raising the earth's temperature or the water temperature two degrees Celsius? Yes, the earth's temperature overall. And yeah, and then that's sort of the consensus among the scientific communities that once we pass that limit is when we really hit a danger zone, if you will. So we're about over halfway there right now. And the thing I found most fascinating about this site is that if you look towards the bottom, they actually give an estimate on the date, the time, and the second that we will reach that two-degree limit if we continue along this path. And so that will be roughly 2038, which gives us about 22 years to genuinely address this issue. And by genuinely address, as we'll see in the next slides, we're talking about not just a little incremental step here and there, we're talking about a huge dip. Yes. Yeah. So let's take a look at the next slide here. Border adjustments. What is a border adjustment? Oh, yeah, we skipped. What is carbon fee and dividend? Oh, sure. Yeah, and like I was explaining for, just to put it a little bit more visually and simply. So yeah, that's the idea of what we're setting out to do is, yeah, put a rising fee on CO2 emissions. So that would start out at $15 per ton of CO2, which equates to relatively about 10, 12 cents extra on the gallon. And then, yeah, raise that fee by $10 every year. And then you talked about only one-third being direct and two-thirds being indirect. See, give an example of people who are manufacturers who manufacture cardboard boxes. Yeah. Because there's millions of cardboard boxes out there. They would be taxed, too, because they're consuming a heck of a lot of energy in manufacturing the product and then putting cardboard boxes together and then shipping cardboard boxes somewhere. Absolutely. And yeah, and just to clarify it, the fee is actually placed at either the point of extraction or once if it's imported oil or whatever, the fee will be assessed once it enters U.S. shores. So actually, before even the refinery purchases that fuel, it already has a fee on it. So the kind of idea is the refinery passes it down to the oil company. The oil company passes it down to the consumer or the companies that will be using the electricity or energy use and somehow or other. And then to take that one step back, there's a heck of a lot of equipment involved in extracting oil from the ground. That equipment is generally made out of steel. You don't make steel for nothing. That's a very energy-intensive industry. That's true. So that, too, would be taxed. Yeah, at the end of the day, yeah. I mean, just from these fees being passed down. So speaking of importing, exporting, so a lot of this comes from overseas. We're the nation's, the world's largest consumer of goods. So we're importing a heck of a lot of stuff and I think this addresses that. Yeah, indeed. So this is kind of a second element of the proposal is to, as it says, charge import fees on products from countries that don't have a carbon fee. So let's say you're indie or something and you ship goods that have a carbon footprint on it, which will be hard to avoid. And yeah, and if you don't have an equivalent fee assessed on that from your country, then yeah, we will assess it. And part of the incentive for getting other countries to adopt their own carbon pricing system like we would have is to, it's sort of the logic that, if I was India, I would, as long as I have to do, as long as I'm going to be doing business with the US, I want to make sure that that money is going to be going back to my country opposed to just to Americans. So that's kind of the logic. And also to keep, one of the bullet points on there was to keep US business competitive and also to ensure that US businesses won't, basically try to avoid the fee by just relocating to a different country. Good point, good point. So for those many reasons. Of course, the largest country or the most of our imports come from China and it sounds like the Chinese premier and President Obama were getting along pretty good on this issue of reducing carbon output. Yeah, luckily China has understood the value of carbon pricing and has initiated a carbon pricing system of their own. It's not exactly like what we're proposing but it's definitely a great step in the right direction. So they're ahead of us in that sense. Yeah, in general. Yeah, they actually are. Well, you know, the portraits of people wearing great big face masks in Beijing and children not being allowed to go outdoors. That's a pretty good incentive. Yeah, jeez. So what else do we have for us here? Oh my goodness, look at this. So yeah, this is... This is Columbia. Yeah, so I brought the slide up just to answer the question has this been done anywhere before and in fact it has in British Columbia, Canada and their system was enacted in 2008 and as you can see on the left a study that measured the impact from 2008 to 2014 found that gasoline consumption was dropped by seven times in the area and at the same time British Columbia's economy was actually entirely stable throughout those six years and actually did perform a little bit better than the rest of Canada during those years. So yeah, so this is actually something that's been tested and we can see a proven model. Because Vancouver and Victoria are right near the Washington border. I wonder how much of that was due to cars driving... Driving across the border. Yeah, no, that was definitely part of the impact to say as well. But yeah, for the most part it was an actual drop as we would think of it without sort of these loopholes. Absolutely, we all follow our pocketbooks which is the basic premise of this. Yes, indeed. And on that cherry note we need to take a break, take away cold green with Geoffrey Kim back in a moment. Hi, I'm Chris Leitham with The Economy & You and I'd like to invite you each week to come watch my show each Wednesday at 3 p.m. Hi, I'm Stan Energyman and I want you to be here every Friday. Noon! ThinkTechHawaii.com. Watch the show. Be there. I'll pay you to full weight! Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Thank you for watching Think Tech. I'm Grace Cheng, the new host for Global Connections. You can find me here live every Thursday at 1 p.m. where we'll be talking to people around the islands or visiting the islands who are connected in various aspects of global affairs. So please tune in and aloha and thanks for watching. Good afternoon again. Howard Wing, Code Green, Jeffrey Kim, Hawaii representative for the Citizens Climate Lobby and we have just begun to see how big a proposal this is. If we're really going to get serious, excuse me, about carbon reduction, this just may be the way and we just saw that British Columbia has indeed undertaken this and during our discussion I learned that China is already moving in this direction and of course we have seen the pollution levels from China go up and up and up and up and up and sounds like they're taking this very seriously and they're undertaking a similar program through this. Yeah, that's correct. So let's go to our next slide. Now talk about a reduction in fees. What's going on with this chart here now? Sure, so this is to show the amount of carbon dioxide reductions that would happen from our proposal being enacted. So as you can see, this would reduce CO2 emissions to 52% below 99 levels within 20 years and that is one of the most aggressive carbon reduction plans that's been proposed for the United States and the blue line is basically showing you what would happen if we didn't do anything or if we did business as usual and the yellow line being the amount of reductions or the amount of emissions that would happen with our proposal in place. That is dramatic stuff. Yeah, definitely and we picked 99 levels because that's basically where the Kyoto Protocol was sort of setting its targets around. And looking at the blue line we haven't done all that badly. I'm in the energy efficiency field and the economy is much more efficient than it was but we have more people and we've prospered more people, more stuff. Yeah, definitely. Just taking a Hawaii example, back in 1990 there was barely any residential air conditioning. Now the great majority of new homes are centrally air conditioned but despite all of that we're not rising so we're doing a fairly good job now but this is what we really need, this type of program. Now let's take a look at what, because you seem to be indicating that we're going to get prosperous through this program. So yeah, because of something we call revenue recycling from the dividend checks our research actually found that people are going to be likely to spend their money relatively soon and sort of as to put it casually, fund money and restaurants, entertainment and so forth. And yeah, in our research found that that actually helps to stimulate the economy and not only create economic growth as we see here but also be able to create job creation and that's not only through sort of the obvious of more jobs because of more renewable, more renewable industries being able to do their thing but also just creating jobs within the local economy from things like people eating out more and so forth. And we've seen this happen in Alaska because Alaska also gets checks cut out to each household but they actually get it for the opposite reason if you will for a surplus of oil production. But regardless, the principle is the same. And people might do this drastic thing called investing in their children's education. Yeah, that would be very nice. And also I sense that it would simply create more American jobs because suddenly shipping becomes much more of an issue. All those great big tankers, they don't run for free. Yeah, definitely. And speaking of economic benefits, speaking of jobs, I think this goes kind of hand in hand with the last slide we saw here. Absolutely, yeah. So as I was mentioning, because of revenue recycling, we would have more job creation regardless of how much growth is happening within the renewable energy industry. Just because, like I said, it would feed into the local economy and help create a lot of local jobs in addition to jobs in general. But also because of the growth of the renewable energy industry, we would see a lot of jobs. And at this point, the numbers are 2.1 million within 10 years of our proposal. So yeah, definitely, it doesn't really hurt on the economic side either. Nothing wrong with 2 million more jobs. Sure, yeah. And those could be some of them very decent paying jobs too. Yeah, definitely a lot of them will be within the renewable energy sector. And I have friends in the renewable energy sector. They're skilled people. They are up on roofs, they're pretty dangerous. They get a nice hefty revenue from that. Right on, yeah. Okay, so what else we got here? Ooh, you've got some supporters in this realm here. Yeah, so this is just a short list of some, you know, noteworthy and well-known figures who support carbon pricing initiatives overall. So yeah, Dr. James Hansen, who, for those of you who may not be aware, is a world-renowned climate scientist and one of the first people to ever testify in front of Congress is really stating the fact that there is such a thing as global warming and it's a serious problem that needs to be dealt with. And he's actually on our advisory board for Citizens Climate Lobby National Office. And yeah, Joseph Stiglitz, who's a Nobel Laureate economist, as well as Robert Reich, who's former Secretary of Labor and another well-respected economist. So definitely on the economic side, this is a credible solution and something that's been talked about for, you know, decades, actually. And it's just, you know, it just hasn't been really put into action and organized around like until our organization came around. But yeah, I think the most interesting name up there probably is going to be Kenneth Cohen, who, as you can see, is the former Vice President of Public and Government Affairs for ExxonMobil. Yes, yes, the great climate deniers. Right, so just showing that there's a diversity of people who all support this idea and think it is one of the first major steps we really need to take in order to make a legitimate impact on the problem. And I'm looking at Arthur Laffer. There's something called the Laffer Curve that economists talk about. So he's very, very, very respected in the industry. And then towards the bottom, there's this fellow named Bill Gates. Who might that be? Okay, so yeah, as it says, co-founder of Microsoft. And yeah, Bill Gates, you know, has definitely been an advocate for a revenue carbon tax for some time now and published a pretty lengthy article in The Atlantic where there was an interview with him in The Atlantic the last few months. So something definitely worth checking out if you have time. And then Paul Anderson, Duke Energy, they're headquartered in North Carolina, but they're throughout the South. That is a major, major, major utility. One of the biggest in the nation. And then finally at the bottom, one of my heroes, Elon Musk, he's developing the, he has a factory that's going to be, I believe it's 42 million square feet. And you'd have to translate that into many, many, many football fields. And it's going to be doing nothing but manufacturing batteries. And the factory is only maybe two thirds finished. And he's already got orders for tens and tens of thousands of his batteries. Yeah, that's a major, major name to be behind you. So you would think that we'd be getting some public action and speaking of public action here, what is this? So yeah, as it says on the bottom right corner, this is a Stanford University poll that was conducted in 2015. And yeah, and the question was, would you support a refundable carbon tax, which is essentially what we're asking for. It's like, yeah, maybe an easier way to look at our proposal is basically as a carbon rebate program, if you will. Like high five only, you don't have to get up and recycle the can, you just get a check sent to your mail every month. And yeah, and as you can see, a majority of Americans are actually in favor of this idea. And to add on top of that, from a more local angle, Blue Planet Foundation actually had a survey recently that asked similar questions and found that a majority of people were actually willing to pay more and not even have this refundable element in there, but just pay more in general to see more clean initiatives happen. So in overall, yeah, I think it's some evidence that our state and our country are ready for this. Yeah, it sounds like the citizens are ahead of the politicians because you don't see a whole lot of political will behind this in the state legislature. In the state legislature, I mean, I don't know, we've talked to several legislators locally and have found quite a bit of support. But nationally, certainly, we're seeing quite a change happening in Congress in terms of their receptivity to these ideas, which will be coming up in one of our future slides. Yeah. But locally, you've got... Oh, well, here's the national. Yeah. Do I see... Where's Brian Schatz here? Okay, so yeah, this is actually only for House members. Oh, House, okay. But yeah, so this is a recent development called the Climate Solutions Caucus and it is a bipartisan caucus that has to have equal members of Republicans and Democrats. Very important, very important, yeah. And, you know, it's very amazing to us that we're in such a short amount of time. I mean, it was formed in February and already now we have 20 members. And just showing that not only are we seeing, you know, bipartisan effort so strong on both sides, but yeah, that they are willing to work together to really tackle this issue. What a concept, yeah. And yeah, especially inspiring to us was a House resolution that was introduced last November from New York representative, Republican representative Chris Gibson, that was one of the first documents from that party that really clearly stated that climate change is an issue that's not only the environment, but national security, and that we must take action accordingly. And he got 12 other House Republicans to sign on to that, too. So I really, really do believe that, you know, there's some changes happening in Congress. Wow. Yeah, that's impressive, and let's hope that a similar change takes place in our legislature. Yeah. Because we have a teeny, teeny little population, but we have a lot of influence in the nation also. And we, of course, are, we pay the highest prices by far. Mm-hmm. And so we need to wrap up, but before we do, how can we get hold of you, Jeffrey? Sure. So if you can send an email to Honolulu at citizensclimatelobby.org, we'll be able to answer any questions you may have. And otherwise, you can just visit our national website at citizensclimatelobby.org. And once again, yeah, our local chapter email is just Honolulu on top of that email address, on top of that website address. Yeah, well, let's see you building and building and building the local chapter. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Okay, well, on that cheery note, we need to wrap up again. We could have gone really deeply into depth into this, but we must bid fondaloha to Jeffrey Kim, the Hawaii Rep for the Citizens Climate Lobby. Thank you so much for coming by, Jeffrey. My pleasure. And see you in two weeks on Think Tech Hawaii Code Green, signing off.