To the editor:

The recent opinion piece in the Bainbridge Island Review (www.bainbridegreview.com, March 22), “Nine-tenths of coal miners are gone” underscores an important aspect of our dependence on fossil fuels: they run out or get very expensive to retrieve, leading to permanent job losses with devastating consequences to communities.

The question of job creation in the context of energy policy is, therefore, an important one. The energy policy that is the most efficient pathway to job creation while incentivizing the move away from dangerous fossil fuels, is carbon fee and dividend. With a national rising fee on carbon at the source, and funds returned to households for mitigation of increased costs, we get a win-win. We get a climate that begins to diminish dangerous levels of CO2 in the atmosphere that wreak havoc if left unchecked.

And we get a strong nudge to the economy that leads to the creation of 2.1 million jobs in 10 years, according to economic models that show us this encouraging data.

Putting a fee on carbon with the accompanying dividend coming back to us, is the primary focus of Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s efforts to prevent the worst of climate change. There are chapters in almost every Congressional district in the U.S. This nonprofit, grassroots organization is working to make sensible carbon fee and dividend policy a reality by engaging citizens across the country to educate, inspire and motivate their Members of Congress to act on this urgently-needed legislation.

I love to envision cities and towns all across this country thriving with clean energy, job creation and reduced havoc from climate chaos. Bipartisan, market-based, sensible, and efficient: That is my kind of policy. Looking at two futures, one with unrelenting CO2 creating job losses, drought, food shortages, extreme storms, wildfires and mass migration with resulting economic meltdowns versus sustainable, healthy communities running on renewable, affordable, energy provided by sun and wind, I know which future I want to see.

BOBBIE MORGAN

Bainbridge Island