It marks the first time that a coalition of College Republican groups has publicly backed a climate-change policy.

“Adult leaders have not acted efficiently or effectively on this issue, and we are stepping forward to fill the void,” said Alexander Posner, the founding president of Students for Carbon Dividends and a 22-year-old American history major at Yale University.

“I think a lot of young conservatives are frustrated by the false choice between no climate action and a big government regulatory scheme. They feel pressured that those are the only two options, and they’re hungry for a conservative pathway forward on climate,” he told me. “The other thing that’s unique here is that the elder statesmen of the Republican Party are kind of uniting with the younger generation, to press the middle generation to act on climate.”

The Baker-Shultz plan has four major components. First, it creates a new $40 tax on every ton of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, which comes to about an extra 36 cents per gallon of gasoline. It also creates a new “border carbon” tax, raising the prices of imported goods from countries that do not impose a carbon tax themselves.

Instead of pocketing the money from those two policies, the plan calls for the government to redistribute it as a monthly check to every American. A family of four would find itself with an extra $2,000 every year, they estimate. (Baker and Shultz claim that their plan should be called a carbon dividend, not a carbon tax, because of these rebates.)

Resources for the Future, an independent economics think tank, estimates that a $40 revenue-neutral carbon tax would prevent 16.8 billion metric tons of carbon pollution. The Climate Leadership Council, which backs the Baker-Shultz plan, believes that the policy would more than fulfill the U.S. commitment under the Paris Agreement.

In return for these concessions to environmentalism, the Baker-Shultz promises a “significant regulatory rollback.” The proposal calls for a full repeal of the Clean Power Plan and a general restriction on the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions.

When the plan was first introduced, it generated some press coverage, but the attention quickly fizzled. The proposal seemed too naïve to work. Republicans had just won an election campaigning against President Obama’s energy policies: Why would they embrace climate change now? And through its control of the White House, the GOP could repeal the Clean Power Plan all by itself.

But the centrism that annoyed Washington insiders turned out to be perfect for college politicos. Posner was inspired by the plan when he first read about it in the press. He contacted the Climate Leadership Council and ultimately interned there over the summer. When he returned to campus this fall, he was determined to recruit more college conservatives to their cause.