Thank you so much for your coverage of climate issues during Climate Awareness Week. Events worldwide demonstrated the growing consensus that the threat of catastrophic and unstoppable global warming is humanity’s biggest responsibility now. Your coverage reflected Maine people’s desire to help solve the problem.

At the close of the U.N. Climate Summit that week, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres indicated that despite many solid commitments by participants, much more in the way of big policy must be enacted worldwide, specifically mentioning the need for more carbon pricing.

A bill currently in the U.S. House of Representatives describes a “carbon fee and dividend” policy that would place a fee on all carbon-generating fuels and return the proceeds of that fee to every legal U.S. resident with regular dividend checks. It is a market-based mechanism to shift the economy toward renewables and reduce carbon emissions. The bill is HR 763, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act.

I would like to urge your readers to help implement this bipartisan-supported scheme by asking Rep. Jared Golden to support HR 763, and asking Sens. Angus King and Susan Collins to sponsor a similar bill in the Senate.

With a national carbon-pricing policy we will join over 40 other countries, including Canada, in this approach to making rapid reductions in carbon emissions in a fair and equitable way.

Along with our own individual lifestyle choices, the adoption of large-scale policies to phase out carbon emissions offers some hope of meeting this, the largest challenge humanity has faced.

Cynthia Stancioff

Chesterville

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