NORTHAMPTON — A nonpartisan climate advocacy group with a revenue-neutral plan to cut emissions will hold its annual regional conference in Amherst next week.
The Citizens’ Climate Lobby, which advocates for a free market-based solution to climate change, will meet at the UMass Amherst Campus Center on Saturday and Sunday.
The group’s goal is the implementation of a “carbon fee and dividend” program that would place increasing levies on fossil fuels and other greenhouse gases, and would then return that money to households in the form of a monthly energy dividend.
The proposal would be revenue-neutral, according to the organization’s website, since none of the fees would go into government coffers.
“Our whole thing is to make this bipartisan connection,” said Caroline Mack, a 70-year-old member of the Ashfield chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby. “Unless Republicans are on board, nothing is going to pass through the Congress.”
Mack, who considers herself a Democrat, said her chapter doesn’t get bogged down in politics. Instead, she said the organization focuses all of its energy on pushing their agenda on both sides of the aisle.
“It’s not the usual way of doing politics,” she said.
The conference will include a keynote address from Republican former U.S. Rep. Claudine Schneider, the first woman ever elected to Congress from Rhode Island.
The event will begin Saturday at 8 a.m. and run through the evening. On Sunday, activities will resume from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.