TCI Regional Policy Design Stakeholder Submissions

There is a problem with many people wanting to drive big trucks and diesel trucks and all the semi's due to hydraulic fracturing. Not just in WV but in PA also. Other eastern states have the problem of population and also semi trucks. Something should be done and initiatives need to continue to reduce pollution from fossil fuels.

Five hundred members of the Faith Science Alliance (an interfaith group of scientists and faith leaders initiated by Cardinal Sean O'Malley) have declared that climate change is an ecological and moral emergency. I applaud Gov. Baker and the signatory states on the TCI initiative--a plan that can move us significantly to net-zero by 2050. In order to be successful, the cap must decline by 25 percent from 2022 to 2032 (that cap level also delivers the greatest health, economic, and job-creation benefits). In addition distribution of funds must accommodate low income and rural residents who will be unduly burdened by the increased cost of transportation. In addition, support for NO carbon alternatives in public transit and a plan for a just transition for workers who are impacted by the plan must be considered.

I strongly urge lawmakers to push for transformational transit reform in New England. We in Maine desperately need transportation options other than individual cars. Please please please explore possibilities for rail networks and expansion of bus networks. In Southern Maine we have an Amtrak train line that is barely used! Put it to good use as part of an intentional transportation network.

I am a citizen in the rapidly developing city of Biddeford, Maine. Although Biddeford and Saco are adding many residential units in formerly vacant mills they are not adequately anticipating the transportation emergency that may result with no clear public transportation adaptations. Extended diesel spewing bus routes will not be enough or good for our environment. Low cost electric shuttles might be an answer in addition to bikeways and pedestrian malls. Alternatives need to be proposed.

I am a regular bus rider in Bangor, Maine and a member of a public transit advocacy group called Transportation for All. I definitely want to see Maine participate in TCI, following the example of RGGI. I am especially excited that TCI could be a conduit for more funding for public transit! I want to see public transit supported vigorously in Maine, both within local communities and as connectors between communities. I'd also like to see policies that support the reduction of sprawl and the encouragement of walkable neighborhoods. Transit riders and drivers should be key stakeholders in developing transportation policies. Policies should not only focus on economic and environmental sustainability, but on equity - assuring that public transportation is available for the people who most need it, such as the disabled, the elderly, and those on limited incomes.

To whom it may concern:
While I believe something needs to be done about climate change, I don't think adding another 17 cents on to gas and diesel is the answer. Pennsylvania already has the second highest gas tax in the nation at .771 cents per gallon, .576 of which is the PA state tax. Diesel is taxed at .985 cents per gallon, .741 of which is the PA state tax. I find it unfair that we will be taxed another 17 cents per gallon with these already inflated numbers. Also, being close to the Ohio border, our business will suffer from people driving across the line to get gas since Ohio is not participating in the Transportation and Climate Initiative. Pennsylvania will lose a lot of money to people driving to West Virginia, and in my case, Ohio to get fuel. Right now, Ohio's gas tax is already 20 cents lower than ours so adding a 17 cent carbon tax will just further incentivize people to get gas in Ohio. Rural America is already economically depressed as it is and adding another 17 cents will have a largely negative impact on them. I'm sure these taxes are a deterrent being used to get people to switch to electric cars or public transport, and while I understand the reason for the tax, I believe they will have the opposite effect in reaching these goals for a couple of reasons. First, electric cars are still not affordable enough for most people in rural communities. This tax will be just be exacerbating the problem by increasing expenses in the average Pennsylvanians’ household and making it more difficult to make ends meet. Another reason I believe that this will hit rural communities harder is the fact that we will not be able to benefit from the proposed public transport efficiencies in the way somebody from Pittsburgh or Philadelphia would. Commutes can be long from rural areas to the city because there is not a lot of work out in the country. In conclusion, I believe we need to take action towards fighting climate change, but I believe it needs to be at a pace that will not hinder communities or businesses. If there were to be a carbon tax, I believe that it should be included in the .576 state tax instead of compounding on top of an already largely inflated gas tax.
Thank you for your time
-Matthew Heard

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.

We are supportive of this initiative with one huge caveat: NO 5G NO 4G NOTHING HIGHER THAN 3G. Why? No one, including our pollinating insects can survive this level of radiation. This level melts human and animal, birds, fish frontal lobes. Do you know what the frontal lobes of the brain control? Guess what. If I am next to any I phone user, that 5G goes right through me to get to that phone.
Yes, we have a mental crisis in this nation and the world. Why make it worse by destroying the frontal lobes?
We have a hunger crisis in the USA, why make it worse by destroying the pollinators?
The Tabakin and Latterner families and all relatives here and abroad.

My husband and I have a company which specializes in industrial design, primarily for electronic devices in both the retail and industrial markets. We live in a LEED-constructed building and hope to own a net-zero house someday soon. Our 2008 Jeep is aging well; we are trying to hold onto it as long as possible before buying an electric car. Hopefully, there will be fully electric possibilities by the time this happens.

In addition to this work and my work as a sculptor, I have been working on climate initiatives, both at the local and state level. My schedule is packed. Why? Because I am scared. Scared for our future. Scared especially for the future of my daughter and my younger friends and scared for the future of their children. On a more selfish note, I want to be able to grow old in one of the loveliest places on the planet I have been lucky to land on. In Hawaii, where I grew up, temperatures now are often 90+ (a recent phenomenon for a formerly semi-tropical zone) and the threat of tsunamis created by the increasing frequency of earthquakes, as well as violent storms have risen dramatically in the past few years. My husband grew up in Oregon and when he went to visit his mother 2 summers ago, the beautiful Oregon summer we both enjoyed back in the 70s and 80s before we moved East was replaced by a dystopian present of browned grass and debris and smoke in the air from wildfires. When we lived in New York City, we had to evacuate our apartment overlooking the East River twice in 2 years. The last time was for 10 days during Hurricane Sandy; the inconvenience lasted longer than that as the electricity in our building wasn't stable, flooded subways blocked me from accessing my studio for many weeks after the storm, and my husband dealt for months with the fallout from 4 ft high floods in the NJ lighting company he worked at. Massachusetts, where we live now, still has a beautiful climate, but erratic winters and wet summers are noticeably more common and more extreme in the past few years. I drive by Oxbow and over the Connecticut River every day. The waters are visibly swelled with trees standing in a now-constant level of high water.

Successfully enacting TCI over one of the most populous regions in the country will have a greater impact than this region alone. Transportation is the largest source of carbon emissions in this area. TCI will show the rest of the country that states can come together on the biggest issue of our time. Not only the climate, but ultimately, the economy and our futures as well will be positively impacted by initiatives in TCI. We need to address carbon emissions immediately. Not only will our children and grandchildren benefit from cleaner air and updated forms of transportation, but us older folks will too. IT IS NOT TOO LATE. PLEASE PASS TCI!