Young U.S. Republicans defy party to fight climate change

Reuters ^ | December 12, 2019 | by Matthew Lavietes

[Oldeconomybuyer]

NEW YORK - Conservative youth leaders in the United States launched a nationwide campaign on Wednesday to promote a carbon tax to combat global warming, defying the Republican Party and opposition to climate measures by President Donald Trump.

Drawn from Republican groups on more than two dozen university campuses, the Young Conservatives for Carbon Dividends called for laws to tax oil, natural gas and coal producers of planet-warming greenhouse gases.

The taxation plan would make fossil fuels more costly while the resulting revenues would go to taxpayers.

“We claim to be the party that cares about the future that our children will inherit, and we need climate policy that reflects that,” said Kiera O’Brien, 21, a senior at Harvard University who co-founded the group.

“We are offering up what we see as the common sense solution and the way forward for the party,” O’Brien told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

A lack of climate action was a “vulnerability” for the national political party headed by Trump, who is seeking re-election next year, the college Republicans group said.

The group backs a market-based solution, calling for an initial $40-a-ton tax on carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, at mines, wells or ports where it is produced. The tax rate would increase over time.

[subterfuge]

Infiltrated by subversives, led by some adults.