Inside Climate News (ICN) reports that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s “working group” on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative has endorsed the commonwealth’s participation in a so-called “cap-and-invest” process supposedly designed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of utilities.
But, the report also notes, the group “stopped short of endorsing membership in the northeastern group” known as RGGI.
While some might laud this move as an exercise in bureaucratic caution, it strikes us a distinction without a difference. And the secrecy surrounding this group’s work remains troubling.
From the ICN report:
“The group’s co-chairs said in a press release that they had ‘reached broad consensus’ on the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and that ‘a cap-and-invest carbon regulation for the power sector’ would be ‘the optimal approach’ to protect energy jobs, supply reliable power, and combat climate change.
“Under cap-and-invest designs, states agree to set a cap on emissions from their power sectors that declines each year. Power generators then buy ‘allowances’ at periodic auctions for each ton of carbon they will emit above the cap, with proceeds going to the states to assist in their transition to clean energy.”
Further, the ICN report reminds:
“Pennsylvania’s membership in RGGI, the cap-and-invest cooperative involving 11 eastern states, has been contested since Mr. Shapiro’s predecessor, Democrat Tom Wolf, signed an executive order in 2019 pledging Pennsylvania’s membership. Republicans in the Legislature, closely aligned with the state’s powerful gas industry, protested, and industry representatives aligned with coal and labor sued to block entrance. The matter remains before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, awaiting a ruling.”
But whether it’s RGGI or this “working group’s” endorsement of a like program outside of RGGI, it does not nothing to negate the primary fallacies of such government interventionism:
Bureaucrats essentially seizing this country’s electric-power generation infrastructure in a hardly veiled attempt to impose — through the command economics featuring onerous taxation — “green energy” policies that will have virtually no effect on that nebulous “malady” known as “climate change.”
All the while, that is, raising consumers’ electricity costs.
That’s what we call the proverbial same pig gussied up with a different color of lipstick.
But just as unacceptable is the fact that this “working group’s” discussions were held in secret.
Oh, indeed, the group finally last week released the identity of those in the 17-member group. It was a mish-mash of industry, organized labor and environmental concerns. And there certainly was nobody or any organization that might totally disagree with the “climate change” orthodoxy.
And, again, these discussions were held behind closed doors. Who said what? How was it said? Who was in agreement? Who was not? Were deals cut?
The fact that the public was denied access to discussions of vital public import remains totally unacceptable.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
