TCI Regional Policy Design Stakeholder Submissions

I support quality environmental safe transportation
We also need a recycling program that mandates that
all plastic is recycled and then it is bio-degradable.
Businesses should be responsible to sell and provide
their goods in packaging that is bio-degradable.
We need an end to one time use plastic.

Even if I have to pay a little more for fuel to get our carbon release down & eventually eliminated i will do that. It's one of those deals where PAY NOW OR PAY LATTER so it must be done. If I have to reduce my transport to fewer trips I'll do it!
In the end, even though no one wants to say it we will all need to get by with less.
MOTHER EARTH SAYS NOW YOU MUST PAY FOR ALL THE YEARS OF TAKING & GIVING LITTLE.

I fundamentally support a declining cap on the production and burning of fossil fuels uniformly across all carbon-based fuel types, liquid, gaseous and solid, each having a similar trajectory to zero, or near zero.

I prefer a uniform declining cap on the fuel itself rather on the carbon emissions inherent to each fuel type. Natural gas (methane) and bio-diesel are have equal or higher global warming forcing relative to oil and coal and should not be considered environmentally safe or “bridge” fuels. Allowing them to replace or extend the life of petroleum fuels presents issues of extending infrastructure life for carbon-based fuels and extending the related CO2 emissions. It is delusional to think any mix of lower-carbon-intensive fuels will achieve the required urgent results.

If I am reading the text correctly, it appears that the intention to force a predetermined reduction in emissions is compromised by the provisions in Section G. Stability Mechanism in the draft MOU. Making additional allowances available for sale or allowances to be withhold from circulation if emission reduction costs are higher or lower than projected, respectively, violates the purpose of achieving a steady decline of emissions, as I understand it. I believe that cost containment is irrelevant and the auction price (“emissions reduction cost”) should be allowed to seek its unfettered market level irrespective of what the AEI model happens to project.

G. Stability Mechanisms.
(1) Cost Containment Reserve. The Model Rule may include a Cost Containment Reserve (“CCR”), consisting of a quantity of allowances in addition to the annual CO2 emissions budget which are held in reserve. The CCR allowances are only made available for sale if emission reduction costs are higher than projected. The CCR is replenished at the start of each calendar year.
(2) Emissions Containment Reserve. The Model Rule may include an Emissions Containment Reserve (“ECR”) that allows the Participating Jurisdictions to withhold allowances from circulation if CO2emission reductions costs are lower than projected.

The urgency to achieve emissions reductions and lowering atmospheric CO2 concentrations and oceanic acidity and warming should instruct language and preclude loop holes like this.

I suggest that a significant portion of the revenues from the allowance auction be designated to support methane and CO2 removal as the technologies are tested and implemented in the next year or two. Several projects are in operation already or will soon be implemented at small scale. Drawing down methane and CO2 actually provide 10-fold to 100-fold greater climate benefits than simply reducing emissions, i.e., reducing atmospheric concentrations and oceanic acidity and heat. A group of 21 scientists, engineers, inventors and other subject matter experts led by two individuals in Australia and two scientist in Germany and France have been working on a solution to mitigate the imminent runaway release of Arctic sub-sea methane and the “blue water” loss of the Arctic ice cap using a natural chemical and biological process that mimics the effects of dust storms that have for millions of years dispersed nutrients across the Atlantic to the Amazon, both of which rely on the dust to fertilize and promote healthy fisheries and rain forests. Google Franz Dietrich Oeste, Renaud de Richter, Peter Wadhams and John Nissen.

My views on climate priorities have changed over the past decade, and the following are a few examples of what has informed my evolving perspective.

As a former petroleum engineer (1970-1972) and as an Air Pollution Engineer at the California Environmental Protection Agency Air Resources Board (2005-2012) having participated on a team of 13 writing and implementing a regulation “Energy Efficiency and Co-Benefits Audits for Large Industrial Sources,” I associated with many fuels and pollution experts as well as oil field and refinery engineers and management.

The final six years of my career were many times more instructive to my understanding of petroleum production and operations than my college training and initial assignments at Humble Oil & Refining Co. (now ExxonMobil). The issues and conundrums of global warming and industrial operations synthesized with me beginning on December 22, 2004. I heard Al Gore present his 35mm slide show on National Public Radio ("It's your World" on KQED, San Francisco) and that awakening led me to the Air Resources Board a year later. Between 1972 and 2005, my career involved corporate planning and various engineering, project management and mid-level management positions.

In January 2007, I was trained by Al Gore to present his slide show (the subject of the movie "An Inconvenient Truth").

Since 2005, my climate activism and professional employment presented opportunities to meet and discuss climate science with (notably) NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies director Dr. James Hansen, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution founder Dr. George Woodwell and IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri early on (2008-2014) and more recently Iron Salt Aerosol and Arctic scientists and professors Dr. Franz Dietrich Oeste, Dr. Renaud de Richter, Peter Wadhams, John Nissen and many other engineers, inventors, scientists and subject matter experts working on Arctic ice and permafrost thawing, resulting methane release, and mitigation technologies.

In December 2008, Dr. Hansen told me that “350ppm is actually insufficient, but an initial target of 450ppm (or 350ppm) is okay—the precise level is irrelevant—as long as we start very soon to reduce emissions, the make an adjustment to the target mid-course. It is the getting started without deal that is imperative.”

In May 2009, Dr. Woodwell told me “we must abandon our reliance on the burning of carbon-based fuels—we are poisoning the earth.”

In March 2010, Rajendra Pachauri told me the atmospheric CO2 concentration was then 0.8°C and that it would get to 2°C by 2035, when 2 billion people or 30% of the world population would experience drought, crop failure, hunger, thirst, floods, sea level rise, increased disease and extinction of species, and that 2012 was the last year the world could afford a net rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

On December 3, 2013, Dr. Hansen et al published a paper “Assessing ‘Dangerous Climate Change’: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature” that suggested an annual decline of CO2 emissions beginning immediately (2014) at a rate of 6% per annum along with “storage in the biosphere, including the soil, via reforestation and improved agricultural and forestry practices.” (bit.ly/HansenPLOS)

On January 9, 2009, the German Advisory Council on Global Change published a paper “Solving the climate dilemma: The budget approach” that gave a set of possible emissions reduction trajectories depending on what year the reductions began—2011, 2015 or 2020. (bit.ly/WBGU9Jan09)

Unfortunately, humanity has missed the opportunities to save itself as suggested by these scientists, so we must “pull out all the stops” as they say, with all manner of aggressive emissions reduction and removal.

If the States in this Initiative are serious about our commitments to reduce our CO2 emissions, the TCI must include incentives or tax rebates for the oldest of all the Greens, geothermal. It has been around since the 1950's and very few people are even aware of it. I installed a geothermal heating system back in '08 and it's been paid for since 2018 with savings from zero gas deliveries over that time. New construction would be the easiest target for incentives, as the wells needed for the system could be drilled within the home's or business's building footprint. Retrofits are a bit harder(that is what I had to do), but they could be popular too with incentives to change from fossils. Please consider this important system type when finalizing this important Bill. Thank-you.
Sincerely,
Kevin Downey

The climate and transportation initiative is essential for improving our environment. I make a point of using the RR to travel, to NYC to DC and wherever possible. We need to improve this infrastructure so others will do the same. Public transportation is a key ingredient in the fight against climate change. We need to focus our transportation money on making it more efficient and available so that we can reduce emissions and increase usage.