April 4, 2017

Christy Kluesner and her husband Dean think a carbon tax will help preserve the Earth for generations to come. They portray themselves, and the Citizens’ Climate Lobby they work through, as playing the long game to achieve a legislative solution that encourages movement away from all greenhouse-gas fuels. Dean Kluesner suggested that some large businesses are quietly preparing for a carbon-tax future, and his goal is to get them not to oppose it when the idea takes root in the public mind.

But the Kluesners had another pitch, and used the picture at right, used in their PowerPoint slides that are reproduced below, to confront and seek help with another reality: The backers of a carbon tax are not diverse. The movement’s foot soldiers, the Kluesners say, are mostly white grandparents. Their presentation below, and the slides, argue that unlike many of the tax proposals floated in the last months, a carbon tax would have major benefits for Americans with modest means.

The speakers asked for help reaching out to a North Carolina delegation in Congress that appears little interested in a carbon tax. That situation might change with Tuesday’s news first that the Trump Administration was toying with a carbon tax to raise revenue for its other initiatives – and then within hours scurrying away from the idea.

The national organization’s website is here. The Charlotte group’s Facebook page is here. An invitation to the Charlotte group’s April 8 meeting is here.

The video below includes all of the Kluesners’ presentation and the Q&A that followed. The presentation begins at minute 10:03. The Q&A follows at minute 40:22.

Below the video are all the slides from their presentation.