Lamont: Votes there to reconsider climate initiative

MILFORD — While electric generators slightly reduced their air emissions in 2018, increases in transportation and business-andresidential emissions continue to make Connecticut’s air some of the worst in the nation at the same time it is contributing to climate change and rising sea levels.

Those are some of the findings of a new report released Tuesday by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection that Gov. Ned Lamont used as an occasion to revive his attempt to persuade the General Assembly to join the regional Transportation Climate Initiative (TCI).

“I think the votes are there,” Lamont said Tuesday morning when reporters asked whether he would ask fellow Democrats in the legislature to include the issue this month in a special session to consider the extension of his pandemic emergency powers. “I’m sitting down. I’m talking to the leadership. If they can make it pass, I think it’s a good idea. If the Republicans have a better idea, tell me their idea, but give me an alternative. Connecticut has been a leader. I want us to stay a leader.”

Using the picturesque marsh and boardwalks at Silver Sands State Park as a sunny, late-summer backdrop, Lamont and state environmental officials said that extreme weather events will be occurring more often unless the world can somehow slow down the warming atmosphere.

“Climate change changes the weather,” said James O’Donnell, executive director of the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation at UConn. “The climate is going to warm and it’s hard to think of any theory in which increasing emissions of CO2 in the atmosphere doesn’t lead to warming. When you warm the atmosphere it holds more water vapor. So CO2 emissions need to be capped in order to limit the amount of warming that occurs in order to reduce the severe weather impacts.”

“People are seeing the impact of climate change,” said DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes, announcing that although the inventory of greenhouse gas emissions is threeyears-old, it remains very relevant. “We’ve seen rainstorms that are depositing six, eight inches of rain in the period of just a few hours. Climate delay is just as dangerous for our kids as climate denial,” Dykes said. “We have to tackle both climate delay and climate denial. We have to continue to make significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, so that we can prevent these gas emissions from becoming catastrophically worse.”

Connecticut recognized climate change as far back as 2008, and Dykes believes that the state continues to realize decreasing emissions in the electric-power sector as buildings become more energy efficient, the use of solar energy expands, and the cap-and-trade Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative sets long-term emission goals, including a 45-percent reduction of emissions by 2030.

The report says Connecticut created 42.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2018, about 7.3 percent below 1990 levels; 17.8 percent below 2001 levels; and 24 percent below 2004 levels, the year they peaked. But Connecticut’s 2018 transportation-sector emissions were 1.3 percent higher than those of 1990.

In the residential and commerresidents cial arena, colder weather drove higher emissions from 2017 to 2018, including an 18-percent increase in emissions from residential use of fuel oil in 2018 and a nearly 9-percent increase in emissions from the use of natural gas. Commercial emissions increased nearly 11 percent for natural gas and 6.6 percent for fuel oil.

Lamont said he will again ask legislative leaders to consider joining TCI, which would generate a billion dollars for the state over 10 years to fund mass-transit, electric vehicles including replacing the state’s 6,000 diesel-burning school buses and fund coastal resiliency projects. His plan to join TCI failed during this year’s legislative session amid Republican claims that the estimated nickel-a-gallon cost to raise about $90 million a year would be just another tax on state residents.

“We all want cleaner air for Connecticut residents,” said state Senate Minority Leader Kevin Kelly, R-Stratford. “But the TCI gas tax is a false promise to improve our environment. A new gas tax will not result in cleaner air. Rather it creates a new financial burden that will hit low-income the hardest.”

Kelly said that since no states to the west of Connecticut are participating in the TCI, their air pollution will continue to drift to Connecticut with prevailing weather patterns.

On Wednesday, legislative Republicans have scheduled a “Stop the Gas Tax” rally from 4 to 5 p.m. at the Wheels gas station located off of Interstate-95 at 440 Lordship Blvd. in Stratford.

AAA Northeast on Tuesday reported that the statewide average of $2.40 per gallon in January for regular fuel jumped to $3 in March, $3.13 in July and $3.19 last month.

Still, it seems less likely that majority Democrats will piggyback the contentious climate initiative into a special session that would otherwise focus on giving Lamont a few more months of emergency powers as the COVID pandemic lingers.

Democrats dropped TCI amid Lamont’s opposition to their request to raises taxes on the state’s wealthiest.