TCI Regional Policy Design Stakeholder Submissions

this is a bad idea for anyone on a fixed income no wonder ri cannot attract good paying bussines to ri

A dues, A fee, A registration, ... A TAX - No more Taxes. Any monies collected in the name of climate change will not be spent with any transparency as to it's actual use. Also getting rid of car taxes, will only increase individual property taxes.

I do not support this new gas tax. It will in no way make a difference in the carbon foot print. All it will do is hurt the middle class working people of the State of Maine. All it will do is drive the prices of other goods up higher than they already are. Maine is in the top 10 in the nation of states with the highest taxes. Is Janet shooting to be number 1???

Enough taxes in Massachusetts already, cut some "fluff" jobs from the payrolls, eliminate a few pensions. In general get your house in order. Do your job and spare us retirees the hardship of mpre taxes.
Do something, anything to find the money we keep pouring into the giant sieve called state government. Cut the pork out of your own budget as there is none left in mine.

I am very opposed to the TCI. My reasons are that the Initiative reeks of centralized control over resources and outcomes. My 75 years of living has taught me that such placement of trust always produces wrong consequences and un-intended outcomes. I would rather place my trust in the individual who has 100% control over his future, rather than a government bureaucracy with it's attendant overhead and populated by over-seers with little first hand knowledge of what is happening on a regional or local level.

I feel very strongly that we need to take immediate steps to reduce the impact of fossil fuels on our environment

I drive a Tesla. I'm not wealthy but I spent the money because I realize the need to be as environmentally responsible as possible and that must include the transportation I use. This is urgent! This is a crisis! We need to act ASAP! Please move ahead full throttle with the kind of modern, sustainable mobility platforms we require to continue living on this planet.

Thank you, David Myers

The TCI is an important effort that will tackle one of the most stubbornly high carbon emitting sectors of our economy and a sector that has worsened public health over the past decade even as various initiatives have cut health-damaging pollution from other fossil fuel-burning sectors of the economy. As a medical student, I have helped treat patients with heart attacks, asthma attacks, and COPD exacerbations in Boston, where life-giving oxygen is restricted from reaching the organs that need it, causing many people to gasp, full-bodied, heart-wrenchingly, as they spend all their energy just to take in the next breath. All of these conditions are made worse by the pollution co-emitted with carbon dioxide when our vehicles burn fossil fuels. As a New York Times investigation found in 2019, traffic and ground-level concentrations of these damaging pollutants have increased over the course of the last decade in every city in the region, putting our most vulnerable citizens, including children, the elderly, and those with respiratory and cardiovascular conditions at higher risk of disease and death. All of these conditions are worsened too by the effects of warming climate change caused by carbon dioxide emissions. A strong, ambitious, and aggressive schedule for reducing carbon emissions from the transportation sector is essential to reversing the worrying trend of increasing pollution in our communities and protecting the most vulnerable among us. The threat of climate change likewise demands a schedule of reductions that achieves zero emissions from transportation by 2050 in the US in order to avoid the worst effects of increased global temperatures. In addition, the changes in the transportation sector sparked by such a policy could stimulate economic growth and opportunities in the electrification of vehicle fueling infrastructure and in the development of a local electric vehicle industry that has so far been limited largely to west of the Mississippi. Given the health co-benefits of reducing fossil fuel use in the transportation sector, the resistance of the transportation sector to gains in efficiency and reductions in carbon emissions that we've seen in the power sector, and the urgent threat of climate change to our people and communities, I urge the TCI members to craft a strong and aggressive schedule of emissions reduction.

I taught environmental systems science to high school students for thirty years, with an emphasis on climate change. It is thus no accident that young people like Greta Thunberg are leading the public outcry regarding the impacts of rising temperature. They come prepared with a scientific literacy that includes an understanding of how interconnected are the world’s natural life-support systems that are balanced by means of negative feedback. Now unbalanced, the feedback is turning positive. For instance, heat means more forest fires, which dries out more trees, which burn more easily, which releases more carbon, which pushes global temperatures higher, which melts more ice, which exposes more of the Earth to sunlight, which warms the poles, which lowers the temperature gradient with the equator, which slows ocean currents and weather systems, which results in more extreme storms and longer droughts. It is also now clear that positive climate feedbacks are not limited to physics, but stretch to economics, politics and psychology. The Amazon, for instance, is turning into a savannah because the loss of forest is weakening rainfall, which makes harvests lower, which gives farmers an economic motivation to clear more land to make up for lost production, which means more fires and less rain. Fluid circulations that were locked into regular forms have started to “wobble,” like a toy top wobbling wildly as it slows. The result, for example, includes cold air spilling south in polar vortexes and disruptions of the normal patterns of deep-water currents distributing heat from hot to cold.

I am encouraged by your initiative to decongest greenhouse gas-emitting traffic corridors through a cooperative, bipartisan effort of state governorships like the one that tackled the pollution of the Great Lakes. You have my complete support for which I’m willing to pay with my tax dollars.