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Action Alerts

UUs for Social Justice has an Action Alert Network, currently consisting of about 85 individuals. Some receive Action Alerts and sample letters by e-mail. Other individuals receive background and sample messages by ground mail. Still other individuals, who support what we do but find they do not have the time to act timely, sign up to have our sample messages sent with their merged signature and address without needing to take action themself. Those individuals receive a copy of the sample message that was sent automatically. You can start the process of signing up to participate in the network by sending an e-mail request to: uusj@sbcglobal.net or leaving a message in the UUSJ box at 773-643-8061. Action Alerts currently applicable will be posted below:

In early January, 2011, the UUSJ Environmental Task Force initiated the following Action Alert, shown below in generic form, which we are encouraging be sent to your Representative in the U.S. House and to your U.S. Senator who you believe most receptive to its contents.

Representative
                  House Office Bldg.
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Representative

                     
Reducing the $1.3 trillion deficit will be a major test of the 112th Congress.  Most experts believe the deficit can not be eliminated with just spending cuts.  It’s too big, and Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs are growing in outlays.  The Congressional Budget Office reported that if policymakers are to put the nation on a sustainable budgetary path, they will need to let revenues increase substantially as a percentage of GDP and decrease spending significantly from projected levels.

The recession, and the tax breaks meant to ease its pain, have dipped government revenue to its lowest rate (15% of gross domestic product) of the past 40 years.  The average since 1970 is 18.1 percent of GDP.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, testified before the President’s Fiscal Commission that a tax on carbon emissions could provide $300 billion by 2018.

Not only would a carbon tax raise revenues to help reduce the federal deficit, but the economic pain of a carbon tax would spur all kinds of innovation to conserve fuel, would reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions, and would reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  If it were a sure thing that we would be paying a carbon tax for decades to come, its likely that utilities would stop building so many coal-fired, carbon-intensive power plants and build more to burn natural gas, which has half the CO2 coal does, plus rely more on electricity generated from non-carbon burning renewable energy sources.

Michael Greenstone, former chief economist of the Council of Economic Advisers, said of the carbon tax, “When you look out at the potential sources of increasing government revenue, this has to be an especially appealing one.  We don’t have very many other opportunities to penalize activities that are harmful.”

In the 111th Congress Representative John Larson (D-CT) introduced “America’s Energy Security Trust Fund Act” (H.R. 1337) which called for imposing a steadily-increasing fee on carbon-based fuels.  It proposed starting with a carbon tax of $15 per ton of CO2 in the first year and increasing it by $10/T of CO2 each year.  While Rep. Larson’s bill called for using the funds raised to reduce payroll taxes, I urge you and others in Congress to use the funds raised through a carbon tax to reduce the federal deficit. 

In conclusion, I urge you to support the use of a carbon tax as part of the mix of revenue increases and spending cuts needed to get the federal budget back in balance.

                                                                   Sincerely,