The ads are part of a nascent effort to sway conservative and moderate voters at a time when the Trump administration is moving to loosen environmental protections.
Earlier this year, a group of prominent Republicans made a splash by proposing a carbon tax, which would tax carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and send the revenues back to individuals and families, in exchange for the repeal of regulations on industry.
This time, it is the bipartisan Partnership for Responsible Growth—also an advocate of a carbon tax—led by George Frampton, a longtime conservationist and lawyer who was a key environmental aide in the Clinton administration.
The ads don't explicitly talk about a carbon tax, opting instead for the vague phrase: "free market solution to climate change."
"We wanted to run these ads to combat the deluge of fossil fuel advertising in [Washington] D.C.," Frampton said in a statement. "It matters what people see every day, and policymakers are surrounded with the message that we can continue with business as usual. That's simply false, and it's dangerous."
The first ad, which will air for a week on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, begins with a shot of a man in a dentist's chair, and a narrator saying, "if 97 percent of all dentists told you a tooth couldn't be saved, you'd pull that tooth." It then runs through a series of comparisons to drive home the scientific consensus on climate change and invites viewers to go to the website pricecarbon.org, where the group describes its carbon tax message.
So far, Republicans in Congress have been reticent to even talk about a carbon tax, even though many economists and business leaders support the idea. There has been no sign that Trump or his economic advisers are considering it as part of their broad proposals to rewrite the tax code.
Read more at Carbon Tax Supporters Seek to Sway Conservatives with New Climate Ads
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