TCI Regional Policy Design Stakeholder Submissions

We need to find solutions to climate change fast. The best way to build bipartisan support for limiting the use of fossil fuels is carbon pricing and dividends legislation at the state and federal level. I urge the governors to adopt this type of legislation as soon as possible.

My name is Cliff Strawitch and I live in Ellicott City, Maryland. Having witnessed firsthand the devastation caused to historic downtown Ellicott City by two catastrophic floods in less than two years, which science tells us was made worse by climate change, I am highly motivated to demand action to reduce greenhouse gasses. The recent IPCC and National Climate Assessment reports on climate change make the urgency of such action clear. Since fossil fuel combustion by transportation is now the largest source of greenhouse gasses, action to reduce this source is essential.
Based on my readings, I believe the best way to reduce this source of greenhouse gasses is a tax on fossil fuels used for transportation. This carbon tax on fossil fuel combustion received the endorsement in the Wall Street Journal on January 17 of 3554 economists including 27 Nobel laureates, 15 former chairs of the Council of Economic Advisors and 2 former Secretaries of the US Department of the Treasury. This approach has been demonstrated in British Columbia (BC), Canada since 2008 to both be effective and politically popular. Figure 1{1} shows just how effective it was at reducing refined petroleum fuel use and therefore greenhouse gas emissions in BC as compared to the rest of Canada.

Figure 1: reduction is fuel use in BC as compared to the rest of Canada. The vertical line at 2008 marks the introduction of the fuel tax.
All the revenues generated by this tax were returned to the people as a reduction in other taxes. After some initial resistance, the tax became popular due to this tax reduction feature. Starting at $10 per ton of carbon dioxide, the tax rose $5 per year until 2012, and has remained at $30 per ton ever since.{1} The tax had no statistically significant impact on GDP, a testament to its ability to shield business and consumers. British Columbia’s GDP growth was on par with the rest of Canada from 2008-2011, actually performing slightly better than the rest of Canada by 0.1 percent. In addition, numerous studies, for example the REMI study{2} , show that this approach benefits the majority of families, including the most financially vulnerable, since they will receive more from this carbon dividend than they pay for increased fuel costs.
In his recent book{3}, Professor Gilbert Metcalf of Tufts University points out that a Cap and Trade approach often suffers from political and economic forces that tend to drive the value of a carbon permit for a ton of CO¬2 down to values that are simply too low to be effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions as is the case with the current European Emission Trading System{3}. In addition, the price volatility caused by these same forces makes planning very difficult for corporations needing to purchase such permits. A carbon tax suffers from neither of these problems and is therefore in my opinion the best way to address greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.



References
1. “Analyzing British Columbia’s Carbon Tax: by Wharton Public Policy Initiative, October 30, 2016, https://publicpolicy.wharton.upenn.edu/live/news/1520-analyzing-british-columbias-carbon-tax
2. The Economic, Climate, Fiscal, Power, and Demographic Impact of a National Fee-and-Dividend Carbon Tax”, Regional Economic Modeling Inc., June 9, 2014, https://citizensclimatelobby.org/remi-report/
3. “Paying for Pollution: Why a Carbon Tax is Good for America”, Gilbert E. Metcalf, Oxford University Press, 2019

The Citizens Climate Lobby is a nonpartisan nonprofit volunteer advocacy group with over 500 grassroots chapters. CCL supports the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, H.R. 763, a market-based solution to climate change that encourages emissions reductions while helping the economy.

Please see:
https://citizensclimatelobby.org/energy-innovation-and-carbon-dividend-act/
for more information and how you can help.

“Most impressive is the work of Citizens’ Climate Lobby…If you want to join the fight to save the planet, to save creation for your grandchildren, there is no more effective step you could take than becoming an active member of this group.” ~ Dr. James Hansen, Climate Scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

I attach the PDF file of my response since it failed to upload yesterday (5/28) after many attempts. Please attach this to my response from yesterday. Thanks.

I applaud the members of TCI for working together to price carbon on transportation. I believe that global warming is the most important problem to address right now, affecting, as it does, the continued existence of our planet and humans' ability to remain on it.
The price you put on carbon must be high enough to reduce emissions successfully, but it must include subsidies for low-income people and those in rural areas so that the burden of the higher fuel cost is equitably shared.
We need this carbon pricing to happen. Please do all you can to make it so. Thank you.

We all are aware of the science of human-caused climate change and the climate crisis that is now upon us. Given the urgency of the hour, we need to make a war-time effort to stop the prolific production of greenhouse gases and CO2 emissions. The fact that our transportation sector is one of the leading causes of this dangerous phenomenon clearly shows us that the reduction of CO2 and PM 2.5 particulates from all forms of internal combustion engine-driven vehicles is vital. The switch of all our public transportation vehicles, be they buses or trucks must be rapidly transformed into all-electric motor propulsion. And we don't have time to wait another 10-20 years! It needs to start now!

We have the technology and funds to do so. The cost to not do so and delay will be far more than if we act now. There are studies abroad that clearly show this. We also need to stop the production and sale of all internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles and heavily tax those still on the road. Gas subsidies to the big oil corporations need to end as well. If this were done, we would see a mass shift to electric vehicles by the populace in general, and car manufacturers would either convert to all electric-powered vehicles or cease to exist.

We're talking about the future of human life on this planet, let alone all the non-human species. This is serious, and if we really love our children, and our own well being, but especially the children and grandchildren in our lives, we will take this seriously and be willing to do what it takes to make the change. The sacrifices we are willing to make now will pay large dividens in the near future!

Here are my concerns about TCI:
1. Please consider investing TCI funds in clean energy, energy efficiency, and more robust public transportation. This would expand career opportunities, and better public transportation would make jobs more accessible. Lastly, clean transportation will improve the health of our region and lower our related healthcare costs by reducing air pollution from fossil fuel vehicles.

2. Please ensure that low and moderate income residents do not bear the financial burden, by distributing TCI funds to cover added energy expenses in a manner that corresponds with the timing of higher costs. Also provide TCI funding to rural residents to cover the added gasoline costs incurred from longer driving distances and from extremely limited public transportation options (e.g. Franklin County, MA, has no evening and weekend buses).

3. Please allocate TCI funds to public transportation, municipal energy efficiency and renewable energy projects, EV charging stations in rural areas and urban areas with rental properties, rebates for electric vehicles, including used EVs, and higher EV rebates for low-income residents, to make EVs more accessible to residents of all income levels.

4.Please consider Targeting TCI funding for the development of community solar for moderate and low income residents.

Thank you for your consideration and serious work on this critical issue of climate change in our region.

Thank you for working on this important issue of reducing carbon dioxide equivalent and other pollution from the transportation section. I hope that the policy will have a pollution price high enough to effectively reduce the emissions needed according to the latest science --- that is, 50% reduction by 2030 and net zero by 2050.

Please ensure that this policy has a strong component of social equity and doesn't hurt rural or low/moderate income people and those same populations have equal access to transport and EVs as anyone else.
I am appreciative that this can be a model for the rest of the country if done correctly. Moreover, it can show bipartisan support for strong action on climate pollutants and can usher the changes in the transportation sector that is so urgently needed. For further information on what states can do, please visit
Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization by Michael Gerrard and John Dernbach, editors:
https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blog/deep_decarb_summary_booklet_online.pdf

At CES, we see real potential in this project. However there are a few things I believe we need to be very cautious about. Electric vehicles are featured prominently in the website and preliminary discussions, and we need to be clear that electric cars are a last resort, the second to worst option only better than regular cars. Public transport, and building safe, dense, and equitable cities around it, and biking and walking as well, need to be our focus. The lithium and cobalt and other materials needed to make these EVs are hugely damaging to the environment, and are primarily obtained through brutal slave labor in central Africa. And building 1 electric bus only requires 4 times more of these materials but carries 50 times more people. Same goes for energy-an electric or a electric-powered train carries many times more people a given distance per kWh. Right now, most power is coal and natural gas, and while it's slowly cleaning up, it's nowhere near fast enough to make electric cars a good idea, especially when more cars mean even more energy needed, so even more renewables would be needed to achieve the same emissions levels. Getting people out of cars solves emissions here and now, and more effectively. It is also equitable, because a huge part of society can barely afford regular cars, or cannot at all, and have to depend desperately on public transit systems that have been destroyed. They can't afford electric cars either, even more so-don't let them be left behind.

The whole reason the US, and other similar nations like Canada and Australia, have such high transportation emissions, is because we decided over the last 50 years to allow cars to take over total control. Rip down our cities for highways and parking lots, and cut public transit. That's why Europe's emissions are so low compared to ours, because they didn't do it nearly as extensively as we did. Now is our time to work this backwards, repair the damage that we did, not pass the buck and double down on the very things that caused our problems in the first place, and hope that electricity emissions decrease fast enough to account for us not choosing to do what is right, and help us avoid disaster.

Jet fuel definitely needs to be taxed, and so does electric car charging. And we need mileage based taxation to replace gas taxes because otherwise electric cars are getting even more subsidies.

We recommend the following programs to try to achieve these goals, whether through legislation and/or using funding to pay for these things:

-End exclusionary single family and large lot residential zoning and embrace transit oriented development (maybe provide funding for urban planning fees and/or incentives to municipalities who do)-minimum of 10 dwelling units per acre
-Ratchet up funding for city and regional transit authorities, both for electric buses and light rail, and for increased service frequency
-More funding to state-funded Amtrak service for more frequent service, and for restoring canceled rail lines and increasing speeds. Maybe more amtrak buses too, or funding for bus services like Trailways, to improve service
-Money for development assistance in Midsize Rust Belt cities like Scranton, Buffalo, Cleveland, Utica, Binghamton, Springfield, Baltimore, where the suburbanization has killed city housing value so badly that infill development is impossible to finance
-Money for new bike lanes and trails, and subsidies for electric assist bicycles

Thank you