[act-ma] (Wed.) 10/1 Cambridge Forum Panelk Discusses Carbon Tax

[director at cambridgeforum.org]

Cambridge Forum
  3 Church Street ● Cambridge, MA 02138
617-495-2727
email: director at cambridgeforum.org
www.cambridgeforum.org

Release                                                                 
                                         September 24, 2014

CARBON TAX TO COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE

On Wednesday, October 1, 2014  at 7:00 p.m. Cambridge Forum hosts a  
discussion about using a carbon tax to combat climate change.  The  
notion of a “progressive energy fee” as the most efficient way to curb  
burning of fossil fuels was first proposed by MIT professor David G.  
Wilson in 1973 and was greeted with silence. James Hansen proposed  
using a “carbon tax” as a means to lower greenhouse gas emissions  
again 30 years later and was greeted with scepticism.  Now  
Massachusetts has taken up the idea.  A panel, including Massachusetts  
State Senator Mike Barrett, co-sponsor of a bill proposing the  
nation's first carbon tax; physicist and activist Gary Rucinski; and  
Anne Kelly, director of public policy at CERES, discusses using a  
carbon tax to combat global warming and create a sustainable economic  
future.  How would the proposed carbon tax work?  What impact would it  
have on jobs and the economy?  What hurdles would it have to clear to  
be adopted?

Michael Barrett is a member of the Massachusetts Senate representing  
Bedford, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Concord, Lincoln, Waltham, Weston, and  
large parts of Lexington and Sudbury in Middlesex County.  An attorney  
and consultant with expertise in the areas of healthcare and  
information technology, Barrett has published articles on public  
policy and politics in the Atlantic Monthly, Boston Globe, Boston  
Herald, Christian Science Monitor and New York Newsday. He is the  
co-sponsor, with Rep. Tom Conroy of Wayland, of a bill to introduce  
the nation’s first carbon tax in Massachusetts.

Gary Rucinski is a physicist currently developing high performance  
teams at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.  He is the co-founder and chair of  
Citizens for a Green Economy and Northeast Regional Coordinator for  
Citizens Climate Lobby, which he founded in 2010 to “create the  
political will for a stable climate.”  One of the group’s current  
focal points is putting a pruce on carbon.

Anne Kelly is Director of Public Policy at CERES, a non-profit  
coalition of investors and businesses which seeks to promote  
leadership and best practices in sustainability.  An environmental  
lawyer with more than twenty years of experience practicing in the  
public and private sectors, she also directs BICEP, a coalition of 23  
companies, including Nike, Starbucks, and eBay, seeking to advocate  
for meaningful climate and energy policie3s at the federal level.

This program is co-sponsored by Environmental Tax Reform-Massachusetts.

The program is free and open to the public.  It takes place at the  
First Parish in Cambridge, 1446 Massachusetts Avenue in Harvard  
Square.  Cambridge Forum is recorded and edited for public radio  
broadcast. Edited podcasts are available at www.cambridgeforum.org.   
Select forums can also be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.

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