#bartr

5-10/12/2019 BUDAPEST

„Love letters” Sound installation

cassette players / loop cassettes / video

[**Bart R requested that I find seven exemplary, accurate, pragmatic, persistent politicians who’ve directly making accurate scientific statements about climate, with adequate economic plans to address relevant issues meaningfully and effectively. Here's a first tentative.**] That might be tough to find, but perhaps that’s not impossible. I’d even venture that when all these good representatives stop rehearsing talking points, they start making sense. To me, what matters are the talking points, as they become thinking points [1]. Your challenge is tempting. I wonder how you’d score Bernie Sanders’ proposal:

Legislation that I introduced(pdf) with the support of leading environmental organizations in the country can actually address the crisis and do what has to be done to protect the planet. Senator Barbara Boxer of California, chairman of the Senate environment and public works committee, co-sponsored the bill that would reverse greenhouse gas emissions in a significant way. It also would help create millions of jobs as we transform our energy system away from fossil fuel and into energy efficiency and such sustainably energies as wind, solar, geothermal and biomass. A major focus of this legislation is a price on carbon and methane emissions. **This fee on the largest fossil-fuel polluters affects fewer than 3,000 entities nationwide but covers 85% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the US, according to the Congressional Research Service.** The legislation ends fossil fuel subsidies. It also protects communities by requiring that drillers engaged in a new technology called fracking must comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act and disclose chemicals they use. To help consumers, 60% of the carbon fee revenue will be rebated to every US resident. To level the playing field for US manufacturers and create incentives for international cooperation, there would be a border fee on imported fuels and products unless the nation they were shipped from had a similar carbon price. To transform our energy system, the legislation would make the boldest ever investment in energy efficiency and sustainable energy. That includes **weatherizing** 1m homes a year, as President Obama has advocated. It also means tripling the budget for advanced research and investing hundreds of billions through incentives and a public-private Sustainable Technologies Fund focusing on energy efficiency and clean transportation technology, as well as solar, wind, geothermal and biomass alternatives. In our bill, we also provide funds to train workers for jobs in the sustainable energy economy and to help communities become resilient in the face of extreme weather. We accomplish all of this while paying down the debt by roughly $300bn over 10 years.