VIDEO: Making Polluters Pay Us Is Step 9 to Saving the Economy

This post originally ran on Robert Reich’s web page.

Instead of investing in dirty fuels, let’s start charging polluters for poisoning our skies — and then invest the revenue so that it benefits everyone.

Each ton of carbon that’s released into the atmosphere costs our nation between $40 and $100, and we release millions tons of it every year. 

Businesses don’t pay that cost. They pass it along to the rest of us—in the form of more extreme weather and all the costs to our economy and health resulting from it. 

We’ve actually invested more than $6 trillion in fossil fuels since 2007. The money has been laundered through our savings and tax dollars.

This has got to be reversed.

We can clean our environment and strengthen the economy if we (1) divest from carbon polluters, (2) make the polluters pay a price to pollute, and (3) then collect the money. 

Please see the accompanying video, and share.