WASHINGTON, DC – Climate Leadership Council CEO Greg Bertelsen said the Baker-Shultz carbon dividends plan is a model for bipartisan climate policy during an event honoring the Council’s founder, Ted Halstead, who passed away last year.
“Ted’s life’s work was devoted to solving society’s biggest problems,” Bertelsen said. “He believed if you brought people to the same table – from all backgrounds and political beliefs – and worked together to solve problems, you would find more areas of agreement than disagreement.”
Bertelsen spoke at the inaugural event of a virtual series in honor of the late policy entrepreneur and founder of New America and the Climate Leadership Council. The series will bring together high-profile business, environmental, and political leaders to discuss how the Biden administration and Congress can implement lasting climate policy.
“In the final years of Ted’s life, he was laser-focused on finding a bipartisan solution to one of the greatest challenges of our time: climate change,” Bertelsen said. “Ted was always ahead of the curve. On climate, he understood that, perhaps more than with any other issue, we need a solution with staying power. And to achieve this, we need an approach that brings everyone along. Ted’s carbon dividends solution is the bipartisan climate policy because it offers the most effective, fair and politically viable way forward.”
The Council released a tribute video to Ted Halstead at the event. Wednesday’s session also featured a climate policy discussion with Ernest Moniz, former U.S. Energy secretary and founder and CEO of the Energy Futures Initiative; Lawrence H. Summers, former U.S. Treasury secretary and director of the National Economic Council; and Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey and former EPA administrator.
The Climate Leadership Council works with a diverse coalition of businesses, environmental, and opinion leaders to advance the four-part carbon dividends framework as the most cost-effective, equitable, and politically viable climate solution. Enacting the carbon dividends framework would unleash America’s full innovative capacity against climate change and cut emissions in half by 2035 on its own.