Hope for Trump’s climate change policy is small, but there’s a chance

So Thomas Friedman (“Is there hope for Trump on climate change?” Dec. 8) sees a glimmer of hope from a recent meeting between Al Gore and President-elect Donald Trump, with Ivanka sitting in. Considering his choices for the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Housing Urban Development, that glimmer is puny indeed.

However, there is something that Trump and his business friends could get behind. According to your reprinted editorial from Bloomberg View (“How Ben Carson could set back climate policy as head of HUD,” Dec. 8) only 14 percent of Americans share the view that global temperatures are not rising. Consequently, it could be argued that people are open to any acceptable plan that would possibly reduce the threat of global warming.

The simple, market-based plan to implement such a goal is to place a relatively small, gradually rising, fee on the extraction of fossil fuels, with all the funds collected being returned monthly to the citizens of the U.S. to offset the expected small rise in fuel prices. This fee would help to factor in the costs of the harmful effects of fossil fuels to society, and thus allow the market to move toward cleaner energy as it becomes more competitive.

So even if that “glimmer” is weak, such a program could truly revolutionize our energy system.

This story was originally published December 17, 2016 at 7:47 PM with the headline "Hope for Trump’s climate change policy is small, but there’s a chance."