Republican Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin announced Wednesday that he would seek to use his executive powers to withdraw the commonwealth from a multistate carbon cap-and-trade program he said has overburdened ratepayers and businesses.
Environmental attorneys and other advocates quickly shot back that Virginia’s participation, approved through legislation last year, could not be undone by the governor alone.
Youngkin’s remarks about the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a program between 11 mid-Atlantic and northeast states designed to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, came during a speech he gave to the Hampton Roads Chamber.
Youngkin, who will take office in January, pledged to withdraw Virginia from the initiative through “executive action.”
“RGGI describes itself as a regional market for carbon. But it is really a carbon tax that is fully passed on to ratepayers. It’s a bad deal for Virginians. It’s a bad deal for Virginia businesses,” he said. …snip…
In 2020, with Democrats in full control of state government, lawmakers approved a measure that is now law, making Virginia a full participant. The program recently brought in about $228 million in its first full year.
Under the law, the vast majority of that revenue goes toward assisting localities affected by recurrent flooding and sea-level rise, and a state-administered account to support energy-efficiency programs for low-income individuals. …snip…
A Youngkin spokesman declined further comment on the governor-elect’s thinking.
The RGGI law included language that said the costs of allowances purchased through the initiative would be deemed environmental compliance costs that may be recovered by Dominion Energy Virginia or Appalachian Power from ratepayers.
Youngkin said in his speech that he expected Virginia’s participation to cost ratepayers $1 to $1.2 billion over the next four years.
Del. Todd Gilbert, who is set to become the speaker of the House after Republicans flipped control of that chamber last month, issued a statement praising Youngkin‘s remarks.
“Governor-elect Youngkin’s announcement is a perfect example of the common-sense decision making we’ve been missing for the past 8 years,” Gilbert said.
Read rest at Washington Times
The alarmist cabal has had more than forty years to come up with
a verifiable laboratory experiment showing that there even is such
a thing as a ” Greenhouse Effect. ”
To date they have yet to demonstrate or cite proof that their
cornerstone belief even exists !
Thermal infra-red spectrography clearly shows there is NO
collective difference in the refecting or transmitting qualities
of CO2, methane, nor the nitrogen oxides with respect
nitrogen, oxygen or argon. There is however an opacity in the
water vapor graph.
This fact in and of itself makes all greenhouse gas effect
claims highly suspicious and requires iron clad countervailing
proof in the face of this known fact.
How nice for you!
Anything that goes against any sensible steps taken by more knowledgeable people – and which are certainly not hysterical.
You are not only contributing constructively to the climate debate, by putting doubt on possible exaggeration and useless measures.
You are paying tribute to anything from the lowest common denominator – and mentally deficient ignorants, whose main purpose in life is to go against science majority and even steps that will be useful, quite apart from the issue of CO2 emission, – will love you for it. Trump for one “thing”.
Mr. Clausen,
RGGI is mostly about virtue signaling. The affected sources treat it like a tax, many states squander the money, the cost per ton of CO2 reduced in most cases exceed the social cost of carbon meaning that there are not cost-effective relative to the alleged negative social externalities, and all but about 5% of the observed reductions were caused by fuel switching not the RGGI program itself. Avoiding RGGI is a common sense move.
Mr. Caiazza, thanks for sharing your view on that.
Some people will put doubt on any schema and/or claim that their taxes are used for wrong purposes – or “squandered”. But I do believe that you know more about this scheme than I do, so I will not let my general view on “republicans coming into power hastening to roll back any environmental considerations – if not actually singing hymns to coal and the mining of it.
As I say in my reply to David Lewis below, this particular issue may not have been the best choice for ventilating my general observation about what is “breaking news” on this site.
Michael, your statement, “to go against science majority” shows you do not understand science. My freshman chemistry professor said that “science is not a democracy.” When 100 physicists signed a letter disputing Einstein’s theory of relativity, Einstein responded, “If he was right, only one would matter.” Galileo was persecuted for going against the science majority of his day.
The climate model INMCM5 was not a subject of a Climate Change Dispatch article. This model, the Russian Model, matches real world data more closely than any another climate model. It is the only model that works when projected on historical data. Yet, it only predicts 1.4 degrees of warming by 2100.
The most compelling evidence of the fraud of climate change comes from its “scientific” supporters. Historical data has been altered to support the climate change narrative. Modern data is also being altered. People watching this data have noticed cases where physical sensor readings have been declared lost, and then a few days later replaced by simulated data a half a degree higher than the original reading. In Australia one of the government groups monitoring temperature has had its people admit to adding half a degree to all of the measurements. These are people who really know what is going on. The fact that they think it is necessary to commit fraud to support the climate change narrative shows that this narrative false.
David, thanks for your comment.
Any and all of those temperature rise forecasts are based on simulations and models. I have never quite understood how they could seriously put a figure – even a decimal figure – on it. It seems to be equation with “10 unknowns”.
Take the tundra and the prospect of melting permafrost alone. Could that be a rather forgotten element that would not only add a degree or two but start a runaway greenhouse effect, ultimately a Venus-effect? I would have a hard time believing a Russian model more than the others. The reference to Einstein and Gallileo is all very funny, but not abundantly relevant here, where proof is not available until it may be too late. Einstein was of course basically right in his statement, but Gallileo was the only scientist. The opposition were priests and not scientists. What makes me sick of many of the articles here is – as I am saying – that they seem to rejoice in going against ANYTHING that could indicate that man-made climate change is scientifically correct, and that they ignore or fail to rejoice that many of the measures taken on that ground will be enormously benefial to nature, environment and both human and all other species.
For instance the recent “hype” that polar bears now hunting land mammals is NOT a sign of climate change. – It will be great if polar bears can adapt to a situation where the northern ice cap – and ice flakes from where they have been hunting around Arctic coasts – will be gone. But there is some very sad footage for everybody to see where polar bears living in very cold icy regions without the other options are starving and trying desperately to “find an ice flake”.
May be this particular article was not the best choice for me to ventilate my more general opinion about the site.
Michael, it is pleasure to have a discussion with someone who is polite. Some who respond talk as if climate realists are some sort of immoral low life.
I agree that some articles on this site leave something to be desired. That is true of some of the articles that mention the pandemic. My education includes a BS in medical microbiology and BS in electrical engineering, but no college is needed at all do see that the pandemic is very real and deadly.
Gallileo was persecuted by priests but they were not the main ones driving the persecution. That was the academics of the time who were very comfortable with the model of the earth being the center of the solar system and didn’t want to consider anything else. Gallileo wasn’t the only technical person of the time but I don’t know if calling these academics scientists would be accurate. With climate change we don’t have the luxury of a few hundred years to know the truth. I hope the truth doesn’t arrive in the form of a mini-ice age.
You may not want to believe the prediction of the Russian climate model. Like all other models it is just a prediction. However, it is undeniable that the average UN IPCC model is running hot when compared to real world data. Yet, there is no desire to correct them.
We don’t have to worry about tripping points. The last interglacial period was 10 degrees warmer than today. The polar bears survived.
Your complaint about the articles rejoicing or failing to rejoice on certain issues applies to both sides of the issue. There was a strong pause in warming in the early 2000’s. Those who claim to worry about climate change should have been celebrating. Yet, different people and groups came up with 68 excuses for the pause. This shows that this is in reality driven by politics.
I now realize that talking about the rejection of Gallileo and Einstein’s theories isn’t what is most relevant to the view point that “most scientists” support the climate change narrative. What is relevant is they have failed to follow the most basic scientific practice. That is to form a theory, often based on observations of empirical data, test the theory, and if it doesn’t stand up modify or replace it. In the case of climate change, the theory is the UN climate models. These are running too hot and this is acknowledged even by some warmest. Yet, it appears modifying these models to more closely match real world data is unthinkable. Any legitimate scientist who wasn’t in fear of losing his job or status would challenge accepting these models.
To say that most scientists support the climate change narrative doesn’t have the meaning of “most” that the average person would conclude. The Oregon petition was signed by 38,000+ scientists stating that carbon dioxide has no or very little impact on the climate. This includes thousands of climate scientists and thousands with PhD’s in scientific disciplines.