Shapiro breaks with Wolf on climate change strategy

HARRISBURG » Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate for governor, is breaking with Gov. Tom Wolf on the centerpiece of Wolf’s plan to fight climate change amid the strong and sustained pushback it has received from building trades unions that have long backed the party’s candidates for governor.

Wolf — a fellow Democrat who has endorsed Shapiro, the state’s two-term attorney general — has worked for two years to finalize regulations to make Pennsylvania the first major fossil fuel state to adopt a carbon pricing policy by imposing a price on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

Wolf has called it a “historic, proactive and progressive approach that will have significant positive environmental, public health and economic impacts.”

But Shapiro, in a statement from his campaign, suggested that Wolf’s plan — which involves joining the multistate consortium, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI — does not satisfy criticism that it will hurt the state’s energy industry, drive up electric prices and do little to curtail greenhouse gases.

“We need to take real action to address climate change, protect and create energy jobs and ensure Pennsylvania has reliable, affordable and clean power for the long term,” Shapiro said in the statement. “As governor, I will implement an energy strategy which passes that test, and it’s not clear to me that RGGI does.”

That, he said, “is a determination I will make as governor, in close consultation with workers and affected communities.”

Even if he wins next year’s election, Shapiro — as state attorney general — could before then be in the position of rendering legal judgement on Wolf’s carbon pricing regulation.

Shapiro’s statement came just before he spoke Wednesday to a conference of union leaders from the pipeline trades. They are among the building trades unions whose members work on power plants, gas pipelines and refineries and, in addition to endorsements, those unions are a huge source of campaign contributions, primarily to Democrats.

Shapiro has made similar comments previously, both to the Indiana Gazette and officials from the Boilermakers’ union.

KEITH SRAKOCIC — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate for governor, is breaking with Gov. Tom Wolf over Wolf’s plan to fight climate change.