RGGI Propaganda Plays the Race Card with Pennsylvanians

Jim Willis
Editor & Publisher, Marcellus Drilling News (MDN)

[Editor’s Note: RGGI propaganda disseminated by Pennsylvania’s DEP and the gentry class shills at StateImpactPA unabashedly plays the race card.]

When you see the words “environmental justice,” that’s just another way of saying racist–or the new shorthand “woke.” Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax scheme assumes all fossil fuel-powered electric generating plants in the state are built in communities of color or in communities that are economically poor and therefore those communities can’t fight back against the injustice of being “polluted.” RGGI presumes fossil power plants are racist and sets out to correct the injustice by eliminating those power plants via taxing them out of existence.

This mountaintop power plant runs through a Pennsylvania township with a per capita income of only $7,728 per year (about one-fifth of the figure for Pennsylvania as a whole) and that is more than 30% non-white. Will the residents who oppose this power plant get environmental justice?

What qualifies as an area worthy of special treatment as an “environmental justice” area in PA according to the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP)? The DEP says if an area has as little as 20% of its residents living below the poverty line, or as little as 30% of the residents are non-white, that’s an environmental justice area. You read that right. Such communities don’t have to be a majority (51%) poor or non-white. Just a small fraction of the population is enough to declare it wokeville–discriminated against–if there’s a power plant nearby.

We’ve written many posts about Wolf’s RGGI carbon tax scheme aimed at shutting down all coal and gas-fired electric generating plants in the state. Shutting down those plants will most hurt the poor and non-whites who will bear the burden of higher electric rates when/if RGGI takes effect. All so rich, white liberals can feel like they’re saving the planet.

The following post from the very liberal, left-leaning, and publicly supported by your tax dollars PBS StateImpact Pennsylvania is pretty much gobbledygook. But you can get enough of the gist to understand that fossil energy power plants are presumed to be racist. Be sure to watch the short StateImpact explainer video embedded in the article.

The Department of Environmental Protection is hoping to address environmental justice concerns raised by Pennsylvania’s attempt to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

The cap-and-trade program among eleven states aims to reduce emissions from power plants by requiring each plant buy an allowance for each ton of carbon dioxide emitted.

In a recent presentation to the Air Quality Technical Advisory Committee, RGGI project team member Allen Landis said DEP is adding a set of what it calls equity principles to the draft final regulation to join the program. They include collecting public input about decisions, protecting public health and working to distribute environmental and economic benefits of the program.

Some environmental groups are concerned already-disadvantaged communities won’t see equal benefits from RGGI, or won’t be protected from a possible redistribution of pollution under the program.

DEP doesn’t yet have details about how the principles would be enforced.

“I don’t think just intentions listed in a bulleted list are enough,” said Julie Greenberg, who directs the group POWER Interfaith’s work on climate justice and jobs. She said there also needs to be a plan with concrete steps to address issues as they come up.

DEP also says it will assess air quality annually, with an eye toward environmental justice communities. Those are defined as areas with a certain number of minority or low-income residents. DEP policy promises to “meaningfully involve” these communities in decisions that affect their environment, but it lacks teeth. The agency is working to update the policy.

Disproportionate impacts aren’t expected in cap-and-trade programs, said Dallas Burtraw, an economist with Resources for the Future.

“It may be that emissions reductions might not occur evenly, or even most quickly in communities that are historically overburdened,” Burtraw said.

But some studies have found a redistribution of pollution after RGGI kicked in.

“Any cap-and-trade system is going to likely reallocate where pollution is created and where it is abated,” said Nathan Chan, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who has studied RGGI. “What’s not as obvious is whether this would necessarily cut along environmental justice lines.”

Under RGGI, a power plant could sell their pollution allowances to another plant. Pollution reallocation could happen if some power plants reduce emissions, then sell their extra allowances to plants that emit more.

Chan added it could be difficult to draw a line between RGGI and increased pollution in a certain area as there are many factors at play.

Danae Hernandez Cortes and Kyle Meng, who have co-authored work on the impacts of California’s cap-and-trade program on environmental justice, called the equity principles a good step to make sure disadvantaged communities are heard.

They said to get a full picture of how air quality could change in those communities, regulators will need to look not just at a certain plant’s local emissions, but also atmospheric conditions that could affect how pollution travels.

Other RGGI states haven’t made such principles an explicit part of their rules for participation, but many use program proceeds to help low-income households, for example with electricity bill assistance. Others are pursuing similar measures outside RGGI. Burtraw said environmental justice discussions have been particularly active in Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey.

Gov. Tom Wolf has said he wants to invest some of the revenue to help impacted communities transition their economies away from a reliance on coal-fired power plants and to support environmental justice areas.

In California, Burtraw said companion legislation to the state’s cap-and-trade program expanded air monitoring networks to identify local pollution hotspots and established a new state-local relationship to create roadmaps for reducing pollution. The state also requires 25% of investments made through the program happen in disadvantaged communities.

It’s been a while since we’ve included the following excellent short video from Mark Mathis at Clear Energy Alliance. It explains why RGGI is a horrible idea for PA.

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