[Date]
The Honorable Steve Cohen
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Representative Cohen,
You are an original cosponsor of the End Polluter Welfare Act and a cosponsor of Rep. Khanna's Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act, H.R. 7960. In February you wrote to xAI about pollution in Boxtown and Westwood, neighborhoods that already carry a heavy industrial burden. That is why I am writing, even though I know you leave the House in January and cannot cosponsor in the next Congress.
I am a private citizen in Utah, not a lobbyist. I ran for Congress in 2020, and I wrote this bill. Rep. Khanna and others are the natural people to carry it. A voice like yours, after nearly two decades of representing Memphis, could help it get a fair hearing.
The numbers have only hardened since I first wrote to Congress in 2020. Human-caused warming reached 1.37°C in 2025 and is rising about 0.27°C per decade. About 130 billion tonnes of CO2 remain for an even chance of holding 1.5°C, roughly three years of today's emissions.
The bill is the Extinguishing the Social License to Burn Fossils Act, ELBA, introduced in January. ELBA changes the rules rather than villainizing anyone. It taxes the excess profits of large fossil companies from 25% up to a 75% cap, and taxes new extraction capacity at 75% of all its profit. A company still extracting after its fuel's statutory end date (coal 2035, oil and gas 2040) pays 75% on all its income. A carbon charge starting at $40 a ton, matched by a charge on imports, returns 60% of the money as an equal per-person climate dividend paid quarterly. Export licenses fall to zero by 2040, and no new fossil capacity is built. Workers get wage, health and pension guarantees, and communities and Tribes get transition funds and LIHEAP. Title I (revenue, dividend, guarantees) is written to move in reconciliation; Title II (ceiling, new capacity, exports) is regulatory.
Two parts speak to Memphis. Refineries, petrochemical plants and export terminals would have to monitor their fence lines in real time, with results public and enforceable by citizen suit. And at least 40 percent of the transition benefits are reserved for disadvantaged communities, the kind of neighborhoods you named in that letter.
I have a daughter who will spend her life in the world we are making. My office sat between an oil refinery and a medical waste incinerator, so I know a little about living beside both. Until 2014 I believed what Exxon sold me about carbon dioxide, and I don't blame ordinary people who were duped, myself included. We don't need a technology breakthrough; we need a moral one.
I have two requests. If you find the bill sound, say so publicly, even briefly. And would you introduce ELBA to Rep. Khanna and to colleagues in your caucus who share your record, or tell me whom to call in Memphis who has fought these fights?
I will gladly testify, or simply talk. Take the bill, amend it as you see fit; please.
In solidarity,
Russ Fugal
https://climate.fugl.dev
https://medium.com/@rfugal