A fight is happening in Pennsylvania between Gov. Tom Wolf (D) and members of the state legislature opposed to further destruction of the state’s physical economy. In October 2019 Wolf proudly announced that he was planning to use executive action to bring Pennsylvania into an alliance of states called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) which currently includes 11 states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia. RGGI is a typical green “cap and trade” swindle which forces power and industrial plants to pay a carbon tax for each ton of carbon dioxide produced. The revenue from this carbon tax is then channeled into wind, solar and other “sustainable” projects.
Under insane energy deregulation policies beginning back in 1996 under Gov. Tom Ridge, Pennsylvania—a coal producing state—has lost 19 coal-fired power plants which have been shut down or converted to natural gas. Since 2014, electricity produced from coal has gone from 39% to 12%, while natural gas has gone from 24% to 51% and “renewables” from less than 1% to 5%.
RGGI would effectively shut down Pennsylvania’s remaining coal-fired plants and destroy its already-decimated coal industry (currently third largest in the nation). With that as backdrop, state legislators decided to take a stand.
In April of this year, 28 Senate Republicans signed a letter accusing Governor Wolf of “subversion of the constitutional process” by brazenly using executive action to unilaterally bring Pennsylvania into the RGGI without legislative approval, and threatened to reject all of his future nominees for the state Public Utilities Commission unless he backed off. In June, a bill introduced by State Sen. Joe Pittman (R), from Western Pennsylvania, SB-119 was passed by a veto-proof margin of 35-15 (6 Democrats voted with the Republicans), that would prohibit Pennsylvania from joining the RGGI without legislative approval. A companion bill in the House, HB-637, was introduced with 29 sponsors, including 3 Democrats, but was not acted on because of the summer recess. Wolf took advantage of this delay to move the RGGI agenda forward.
