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According to the 2015 edition of the Energy and Climate Outlook issued by the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, CO 2 levels are reaching new highs and are expected to keep increasing.

With current efforts and without extraordinary political agreement or technological breakthroughs, the report estimates that the Paris Agreement’s objective of limiting global warming to two degrees by 2050 is vastly compromised.

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In February, a group of U.S. Republican elders speaking for the Climate Leadership Council, including George Shultz and James Baker III (each a former U.S. Secretary of State and former Treasury Secretary), presented a plan to efficiently fight climate change. They proposed that the U.S. adopt a “border carbon adjustment” (BCA); not to be confused with the unrelated “border adjustment tax” promoted by U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan.

The Climate Leadership Council’s BCA would call for a gradually increasing carbon tax to be paid by producers and passed on to consumers, essentially making it a consumption tax. However, American exports to countries without comparable carbon pricing would be exempt from the tax in order to preserve competitiveness. Imports from these countries would face an entry tax in order to level the playing field with goods and services produced and sold domestically.