Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is not completely opposed to a carbon tax, her campaign chair said Tuesday.
“Right now we’ve not proposed a carbon tax,” John Podesta told an audience Tuesday at a climate change event in Philadelphia during the Democratic National Convention. “We believe we can get the job done. But if Congress wants to come forward with one, we’ll take a look at it.”
The Democratic Party included a carbon tax plank in the party platform Tuesday to address so-called man-made global warming.
“Democrats believe that carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases should be priced to reflect their negative externalities, and to accelerate the transition to a clean economy and help meet out climate goals,” the Democratic Party platform now reads.
Anti-fossil fuel activists within the Democratic Party cheer the idea of a carbon tax, including former presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“I believe we should ban fracking,” Sanders said. “She does not. I believe we should have tax on carbon and deal aggressively with climate change. That is not her position. Those are some of the issues that I am campaigning on.”
Meanwhile, the party’s wealthiest donor, billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, has called a carbon tax too much of a wedge issue.
The former hedge fund manager turned Democratic Party moneyman told reporters Monday swapping the Clean Power Plan for a carbon tax is essentially a death knell for Democrats in states heavily tied to natural gas development.
Conservatives argue the new platform will likely sacrifice several battleground states dependent on fracking.
“The Republicans may have already won the election in five short words: ‘We oppose any carbon tax,’” Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said in a press statement following the decision.
Podesta and Steyer were pegged to speak at a climate event Tuesday in Philadelphia, which, according to a press statement at the time, was meant to address the “critical importance of climate change in the election, as well as the strongest climate action focused Democratic Party platform ever.”
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Chris White is a contributer for the Daily Caller. This content was provided by the Daily Caller News Foundation