15 states take to negotiations
Connecticut and 15 other states have taken to negotiating climate policy with Canada and Mexico, since President Donald Trump announced he intended to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement.
The coalition of states called the U.S Climate Alliance announced several environmental goals that the Alliance, Canada and Mexico have agreed to collaborate on, including clean transportation, zero carbon power generation, increasing coastal resiliency and sharing information about the social cost of carbon.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the governors of California, Hawaii and Washington described the Alliance’s work at a Thursday news conference at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco. “We simply need to do everything in our individual powers and join our states together to make sure we turn bad policy back or at least that we hold our own until someone will develop better policy on a national basis,” Malloy said.
The Alliance upholds the Paris Climate Agreement, the landmark deal to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions that was ratified by 170 nations, including the United States under former President Barack Obama. The states and one territory forming the Alliance represent 40 percent of the U.S. economy and the world’s third largest economy, said Jay Inslee, governor of Washington.
Malloy also announced other steps Connecticut will take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions Thursday.
The state joined a separate coalition of countries, states and businesses Thursday
that promise to phase out traditional coal power and place a moratorium on new coal power stations.
The state has only one coal-fired plant now in use, Bridgeport Harbor Station, and that plant will cease burning coal by 2021. As part of the Powering Past Coal Alliance, Connecticut is committing to prohibit the construction of any new coal-fired power plants.
Malloy also directed the Connecticut 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.
“Climate change is the most significant global threat of our lifetime, we have seen its impacts firsthand this summer from wildfires in California to the powerful Hurricane Florence on the east coast,” Malloy said in a statement. “While President Trump intends to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, Connecticut refuses to listen to coal lobbyists and climate change deniers when setting environmental policy.”
Malloy attended the Global Climate Action Summit — a conference intentionally rebuking Trump’s environmental policy — with thousands of international policymakers, state leaders, mayors, entertainers and scientists Wednesday and Thursday. Organized by California’s Gov. Jerry Brown, the summit is the first time a state has sponsored an event in support of the Paris Climate Agreement, which Trump bashed as a bad deal for the U.S.