Leaders across the continent who have adopted aggressive climate policies face a political backlash as the programs increase the cost of electricity, home heating and even common goods.
In New York, Washington, Pennsylvania and California – and even Canada – concerns about the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions are fueling election revolts and leading some liberals to scale back or reshape their own ambitions. climate.
Take Washington, for example, where the year-old state program faces a ballot initiative in November that would halt the effort, which aims to reduce the state’s net carbon emissions to zero by 2050. The ballot initiative is backed by a manager hedge fund conservator.
Washington’s cap-and-trade program “does nothing other than make gas, groceries and food more expensive,” Brian Heywood, the ballot measure’s sponsor, said in an interview. “I call it the ‘Hey, buy a Tesla, bro’ mentality.”
Washington’s Democratic Governor Jay Inslee – one of the nation’s leading advocates for aggressively combating climate change – has no regrets. “This is a fight worth fighting,” he said in an interview. “May come.”
The last time Congress considered putting a price on carbon, it provoked a huge backlash that helped Democrats lose the House and left them with lasting political scars. State leaders are once again testing the willingness of American voters to adopt aggressive tactics that will help combat climate change — while costing everyone more money.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has already discovered what a powerful issue carbon pricing has become: the Liberal leader’s re-election bid is in jeopardy due, in part, to the April 1 increase in the national tax. on carbon, which provoked protests and widespread opposition.
Now governors are facing the same setback. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro caved last month to opposition from Republicans, labor groups and fossil fuel interests to the Northeast’s carbon pricing program and proposed his ownInstead, the state’s carbon cap drew immediate fire from both parties and is doubtful it can pass in a divided Legislature.
And New York Governor Kathy Hochul, amid growing resistance from the state’s business community, is considering neutering her nascent self-defense program. She proposed a price cap so low that it would not encourage enough reductions to ensure New York meets its 2030 emissions target of 40% below 1990 levels.
“Cost is one of those things that ultimately can defeat the effort,” said former New York Department of Environmental Conservation head Basil Seggos, who stepped down earlier this month after a nearly nine years. “The governor… wants to see a program that is affordable.”
The push for carbon pricing – touted as the most economically efficient way to tackle climate change – was slow to arrive. The last time Congress seriously considered putting a price on carbon emissions was 15 years ago.
But since then, the concept, which requires companies with high emissions to buy carbon credits at state auctions or pay a fixed fee per ton of carbon emissions, has been quietly gaining traction. Programs in California, Canada and the Northeast have raised about $25 billion for state coffers since 2005. Washington programs have raised $2 billion since they began last year. The cap for New York’s entire economy would begin in 2025.
Inslee wants to link his program to those in California and Quebec, which would make North America’s largest carbon market even larger. Industrial emissions from around 1,000 companies are covered by all programs on the continent.
“This is very important from a national perspective,” Inslee said. “We took a step forward. The nation must not go backwards and we need to extend our measures to the entire country.”
Officials now wonder whether they failed to publicize the benefits sufficiently.
California Governor Gavin Newsom is highlighting a semi-annual credit on residents’ utility bills that redistributes some of the auction proceeds.
“I haven’t seen many headlines, but a $146 rebate has been given to all ratepayers in terms of their electric bill to offset these costs,” he said last week. “We have to be more attentive, I think, than we have been in the past to accumulating costs at a precious and important time.”
In Canada, support for carbon pricing – Trudeau’s signature policy – has waned as high interest rates and cost-of-living concerns have taken hold. The resistance has put Trudeau, with his popularity plummeting, on the defensive: His own Liberals have exempted home heating oil from the fuel tax and are selling policy rebate checks as an affordability measure rather than a climate program.
And the left-leaning New Democratic Party of Canada, in a surprising move, recently backed off its support for the Trudeau government’s fuel charge, suggesting there are more effective policies to combat climate change.
Meanwhile, rival Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is betting that long-tail anger over the carbon tax could help his party win the next election, to be held in October next year – and ultimately remove Trudeau from office.
“There is a lot of political pressure. I’m certainly feeling it; everyone should feel this way about people who are concerned about affordability, who are concerned about climate change,” Trudeau told reporters earlier this month.
But the most notorious fight over carbon pricing is taking place in Washington.
Gas prices have soared in Washington to about $1 above the national average and above neighboring Oregon, according to AAAalthough Inslee’s office disputes that the entire increase is tied to the cap-and-trade program. A survey conducted last month of 600 registered voters in Washington found that 53 percent support the effort to end cap and trade, with a margin of error of 4.7 percentage points.
State legislators changed the program last month to give farmers and truck drivers a discount to alleviate the costs of fuel surcharges. But it is not enough to appease opponents.
Heywood is arguing that the industry did in the past – but mainstream business may not be with it. Amazon, Microsoft and even oil giant BP are helping defend Washington’s law, the campaign announced — although Mark Prentice, campaign spokesman, declined to disclose how much money the companies donated ahead of next month’s campaign finance filing deadline. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates also donated US$1 million.
BP, which had formerly opposite a carbon tax proposal in the state, said it was in line with the current program “because it is an economy-wide, market-based program that can help reduce carbon emissions, attract innovation and create investment and jobs in clean energy in Washington. ”
Inslee highlighted the positive health impacts of a carbon cap and revenue-funded projects such as bus electrification. But Heywood said voters are feeling the crisis.
“It does nothing but make some people feel good about dealing with carbon dioxide production,” he said. “And it is doing so enormously at the expense of the working class and the working poor.”
Anne C. Mulkern contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared on Politico.com read the full story
