On Eve of First Comptroller Debate, Dunlea Renews Call to Divest NY Pension Fund from Fossil Fossils, Enact Carbon Tax

(Poestenkill NY) Mark Dunlea, the Green Party candidate for State Comptroller, said that the recent actions by the IPCC and the Nobel Prize Committee reinforces the need to divest the state pension fund from fossil fuels and for the state to enact a carbon tax.

Mark Dunlea for State Comptroller

https://markdunlea.org

For Immediate Release

October 8, 2018

Contact:

mark@markdunlea.org

"Voters need to give our politicians in Albany and DC a wake-up call by voting Green this November. Climate change is by far the greatest threat to the future of humanity, yet the unwillingness of politicians to take the necessary action is why the New York Times Magazine recently wrote that humanity is doomed. The NY Times may say game over but the Greens say game on. The Green Party is the only party with the political will to enact an emergency mobilization to confront climate change," said Dunlea, a long-time climate change activist with 350NYC and PAUSE.

The first debate in the state Comptroller race will take place on Tuesday October 9 at 11 AM on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network.

Dunlea has long called for the state to enact a state carbon tax (A107 / S2846) to make polluters pay for the damage caused by climate change. He wrote a state carbon tax bill that was introduced three years ago.

In awarding Mr. Nordhaus the co-prize in economies, the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences cited him for showing that "the most efficient remedy for problems caused by greenhouse gases is a global scheme of universally imposed carbon taxes." A faculty member at Yale University since 1967, Mr. Nordhaus' economic approaches to global warming include modelling to determine the efficient path for coping with climate change.

Dunlea also drafted legislation (A5105 / S5908) to have the state set a goal of 100% clean energy (from all sources) by 2030, with an immediate halt to all new fossil fuel infrastructure. The Green Party has been calling for a Green New Deal for a decade.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a new study today making another plea for a worldwide emergency mobilization to address the climate crisis. The IPCC says that we need to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees C (2.7 F) rather than the old target of 2 degrees. The official NYS estimate is that our temperature may raise by 10 degrees F by 2080.

The IPCC concluded that climate change is set to inflict "severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts" on people and the natural world unless carbon emissions are cut sharply and rapidly. The report states that climate change has already increased the risk of severe heatwaves and other extreme weather and warns of worse to come, including food shortages and violent conflicts. But it also found that ways to avoid dangerous global warming are both available and affordable.