Letter to the Editor: Work remains on climate change

Dear Editor:

In an on-line conference with local environmental citizen-lobbyists on Wednesday, June 17, Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard, who represents Congressional District 40 (Downey, Bellflower, Commerce, East LA, and surrounding communities) expressed her continued concern about climate change and its impact on working and immigrant families and others in the district. 

Although Congress must make dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic its priority, she emphasized the need to deal with climate change as an urgent concern.

Citizens’ Climate Lobby volunteers Anita and Guido Rivero, Sal Cervantes, and Lita Cervantes of Downey; Filiberto Palacios of Bellflower; and Ken Bodger of Whittier requested the meeting to express their continued alarm at the climate crisis and to thank Rep. Roybal-Allard for cosponsoring the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, H.R. 763, which places a steadily-rising fee on fossil fuels and then returns all of the proceeds, except for administrative expenses, equally to American families via a monthly dividend. 

Professional economic studies have shown that the approach embodied in the Act will reduce CO2 emissions by 40% in twelve years while creating jobs and saving 295,000 lives in ten years due to reduced air pollution.

"It is urgent that this bill, which I have co-sponsored, be approved," said the congresswoman, noting that H.R. 763 now has 80 cosponsors from all over the nation, including neighboring Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Norwalk) and herself.

Filiberto shared the results of a recent Harvard University study (not yet peer-reviewed) which showed that air pollution increased COVID-19 death rates by eight percent, and an economic study which projects that 89% of all households and 96% of low-income households will receive more from H.R. 763’s dividends than they pay in increased costs for fossil fuels and the goods and services produced using them.

“The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act is based on a simple idea: if you raise the price of something, people will use it less,” Anita explained, pointing out that this proposal seeks to correct market imbalance, noting that, "Polluters must pay for the damage they do. We cannot throw garbage on the street; it is not free. We pay for garbage collection, in the same way that we must increase the price of fossil fuels to account for the damage they are doing to our environment and to all of us. Returning all net revenues raised equally to American families ensures that working families benefit for the transition to a clean-energy economy and are not hurt by it.”

H.R. 763 grew out of the carbon-fee-and-dividend plan designed and promoted by Citizens Climate Lobby, or CCL, a volunteer, nonpartisan group of more than 180,000 supporters in the United States and 595 chapters in the USA and other countries around the world. "All of our volunteers work together to tackle the problem of global warming through a plan to put a price on fossil fuel usage to reduce carbon emissions," Anita said.

Lita Cervantes, a recent Cal State Dominguez Hills graduate who is beginning her career as a music teacher, commented on the multiple crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, recession, and climate change that will impact her and her generation’s futures: “Seeing such an outpouring of volunteer action, whether it be the Black Lives Matters marches and Citizens’ Climate volunteers including many much older than myself” give me hope, as does the genuine concern regarding climate change and other issues on the part of my Congresswoman, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard.

Guido Rivero
Downey