Connecticut’s voice can have effect

This may be a literal equivalent of shouting into the wind, but the state of Connecticut is doing the right thing by piping up from its little spot on the East Coast — along with 15 other states — to make a statement on climate policy in the face of the Trump administrations determination to roll back regulations.

The determined group — they call themselves the U.S. Climate Alliance — is attempting to negotiate with our neighbors in Canada and Mexico in the aftermath of President Trump’s announcement that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, a landmark deal that was ratified by 170 nations.

According to information discussed at a meeting of the coalition of states last week in San Francisco, Mexico and Canada have agreed to work with the Alliance in areas like clean transportation, zero carbon power generation, increasing coastal resiliency and sharing information about the social cost of carbon.

It may seem presumptuous that a group of states can move ahead and influence climate change to any degree.

But it is the accumulation of small victories — just as it was the accumulation of neglect and ignorance that eventually brought humans to the point they feared for the purity of their water and air — that can have an impact.

It was just this spring, for instance, that Connecticut prevailed in a federal lawsuit brought with the State of

New York against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regarding ozone pollution drifting into the two states from the Midwest.

The lawsuit alleged that the EPA, then headed by Trump appointee Scott Pruitt, was not sufficiently enforcing the federal Clean Air Act and protecting the populations of Connecticut and New York, so-called downwind states, from the deleterious effects of pollution generated in “upwind” states with more relaxed air pollution regulations, officials said.

It is suits like this that are slowing the administration’s efforts to roll back any number of Obama-era regulations put into place to protect the environment.

One of the lessons of the matter is that you can fight — and win — not only City Hall, but the White House.

Regarding the Alliance, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said, “We simply need to do everything in our individual powers and join to turn bad policy back or at least hold our own until someone will develop better policy on a national basis.”

The Paris Accord, ratified by the United States under former President Barack Obama, was envisioned as global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Malloy is staying the course on the environment, just as he has on gun safety through his tenure.

He’s directed, for instance, the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to develop regulations that will phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons, a group of potent greenhouse gases, used in refrigeration and air conditioning.

Shouting into the wind, perhaps, but enough voices can have an effect.

One of the lessons of the matter is that you can fight — and win — not only City Hall, but the White House.