OPINION:
In announcing plans to reinstitute a carbon tax, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger makes no mention of global warming, the bogeyman usually invoked by supporters of such levies.
That may be because the apocalyptic narrative that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide threaten to overheat the planet has become widely seen as bogus — perhaps not fitting for a newly inaugurated chief executive. So what about the carbon tax? It is imposed on fossil fuels through membership in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a consortium of New England and mid-Atlantic states.
The objective is to reduce the use of fuels such as natural gas and coal and the carbon dioxide emissions from burning them, thereby avoiding purportedly dangerous atmospheric warming. Announcing Virginia’s first entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in 2020, Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, said the commonwealth “is sending a powerful signal that [it] is committed to fighting climate change.”
Then, in 2023, a more clear-eyed Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, withdrew from the initiative. Ms. Spanberger, a Democrat, pledged to reverse this action. As Virginia policymakers considered the Youngkin proposal to leave the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the Fairfax, Virginia-based CO2 Coalition issued its 2022 report, “Virginia and Climate Change: Separating Fact From Fiction.” It concluded that environmental justifications for membership in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative were, well, fiction.
Written by seven scientists, most of them widely published, the report reviewed data concerning severe weather, temperature, carbon dioxide levels, heat waves, sea level and the health of Virginia agriculture. Despite decades of industrial activity, the commonwealth was found to be doing well.
Along with agriculture in most of the rest of the country, Virginia crop yields regularly increased as a result of technological advancements, modest warming and higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which boost plant fertilization. The report gave no cause for alarm regarding rising seas, which have exhibited no increase in the rate of natural rise, or severe weather, whose worldwide trends have been in a 20-year decline.
Virginia’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative would make no meaningful difference in the weather. Using the methodology of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the amount of warming averted by eliminating all the commonwealth’s carbon dioxide emissions was calculated to be 0.0038 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100, an amount too small to be felt or measured.
Since Virginia’s withdrawal from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, alarmists’ predictions of “existential” coastal flooding, megastorms and general mayhem have regularly failed to materialize, just as they have for the past 35 years. Moreover, numerous studies, in addition to the CO2 Coalition report, have refuted the pseudoscience of doomsayers, and the negative consequences of climate programs such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative have become more apparent. Extreme cases such as Germany’s self-inflicted high energy prices and deindustrialization present real cause for alarm.
Governments, businesses and voters are increasingly questioning those who promote hysteria over the natural changes of a complex, uncontrollable climate.
Little wonder that Ms. Spanberger offered fiscal arguments for rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative rather than repeat the tired trope of climate change. Before Mr. Youngkin’s 2023 withdrawal, “RGGI generated hundreds of millions of dollars for Virginia,” she said.
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative can hardly be the best way to raise money if it provides no environmental benefit. Forcing the closure of economical power sources such as coal- and natural gas-fired plants in favor of “green” solar and wind facilities, an objective of the initiative, is a financial loser for consumers. Electricity rates in consortium states are higher than the national average, and many are among the highest in the nation.
After six years of debate over whether to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, Pennsylvania Republican legislators persuaded the Democratic governor to drop the proposal during budget negotiations this fall. Participation in the initiative had been projected to increase Pennsylvania’s electricity rates by 30%.
Labor union leaders frequently testified that the threat of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative had discouraged billions of dollars in energy investment in the Keystone State.
A CO2 Coalition examination of the Pennsylvania proposal described it as “a solution in search of a problem.” Ditto for Old Dominion. Virginia policymakers should reject the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative as a bad idea. The commonwealth has no climate crisis and no other good reason to join the consortium.
• Gregory Wrightstone, a geologist, is executive director of the CO2 Coalition in Fairfax, Virginia.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.