Editorial on climate initiative got it wrong
On March 14, 2021, Hearst Connecticut Media ran an editorial supporting The Transportation Climate Initiative, or TCI, and called it a “climate plan” and “important step” for Connecticut.
We believe this couldn’t be further from reality.
Here’s why:
This “climate plan” is nothing more than a money grab by the state that would generate no less than $1 billion over the years for Connecticut. (This is the administration’s estimate, not ours.) This obviously comes at a huge expense to working class people.
If TCI were to really curb emissions, a recent Tufts University study (November 2020) found that it would take the price of gasoline to increase by as much as 61 cents per gallon in order for that to happen. The 5 cent per gallon tax that the administration keeps mentioning doesn’t even come close to moving the environmental needle.
We don’t need it. TCI just released new numbers stating that emissions would decrease by 18.8 percent to 25.7 percent without the program. So, why do it?
Environmental justice groups like Climate Justice Alliance and the Sierra Club oppose TCI because they believe that taxing gasoline will only financially hurt those in urban communities and will not lower emissions enough. In addition, NAACP New Jersey State Conference, Teamsters Local 469 and the Vermont chapter of the AFL-CIO also oppose TCI among many others.
While the editorial stated that most people would not even notice the 5-cent bump in the price of gasoline, we beg to differ. The U.S. DOT states the average person drives around 13,500 miles every year; at 25 miles per gallon at 5 cents per gallon, TCI would equal $270 per year for the average family. That would buy about 75 gallons of milk, 150 loaves of bread and 123 dozen eggs. The list goes on, but you get the picture. Not to mention that TCI documents released this month demonstrate that the new tax can go as high at 27 cents per gallon. That’s a lot of bread and milk!
TCI just reshuffles the emissions deck a bit. Its ultimate goal is to get more people to drive electric vehicles and take COVID-unfriendly public transportation. Since our electric grid is mostly powered by fossil fuels, we are trading tailpipe emissions for power plant emissions.
Which leads us to the million-dollar question: Do we really want to give utilities more control of our lives? We saw what happened in Texas. We lived through what’s happened here in Connecticut in August. Let’s not forget those skyrocketing electric bills that had so many people up in arms. So, this leads us to the ultimate question: Do we really want to put all of our energy eggs in the hands of the electric monopolies? What happens when we lose power again? What happens when we can’t charge our electric vehicles to leave town to avoid a storm like we just saw in Texas? What then?
We could give you so many other reasons why TCI just doesn’t make sense, including the fact that it would become Connecticut’s fourth gasoline tax in a state that already has the highest tax in New England. The bottom line is this: If you want to combat climate change, TCI is not the way to do it. It’s a regressive tax that will hurt low- and middle-income families while bankrolling the way for the rich to drive their electric vehicles.
If we really want to combat climate change, we need to look for other ways to do it. For example, we support stricter federal fuel mileage efficiency standards that reduce pollution by getting more miles out of the same gallon of gas. We are urging state lawmakers to follow the lead of other states like New York, Pennsylvania and seven others that have already pulled out of TCI and oppose Senate Bill 884. There is a better way than making people pay more at the pumps.