by Gregory Wrightstone

In announcing plans to have Virginia reinstitute a carbon tax, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger makes no mention of global warming – the bogeyman usually called upon by supporters of such levies. That may be because the apocalyptic narrative that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) threaten to overheat the planet has become widely seen as bogus – perhaps not fitting for a newly elected chief executive.

So, what about the carbon tax? It is imposed on fossil fuels through membership in a consortium of states in New England and the Mid-Atlantic – the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The objective is to reduce the use of fuels like natural gas and coal and the CO₂ emissions from burning them, thereby avoiding purportedly dangerous atmospheric warming.

Announcing Virginia’s first entry into RGGI in 2020, Democrat Governor Ralph Northam said the commonwealth “is sending a powerful signal that (it) is committed to fighting climate change.”

Then in 2023, a more clear-eyed Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin withdrew from RGGI, an action the freshly inaugurated Governor Spanberger, a Democrat, pledged to reverse.

As Virginia policymakers considered the Youngkin proposal to leave RGGI, the Fairfax, Virgina-based CO₂ Coalition issued its 2022 report, “Virginia and Climate Change: Separating Fact from Fiction.” It concluded that environmental justifications for RGGI membership were, well, fiction.

Written by seven scientists, most of them widely published, the report reviewed data concerning severe weather, temperature, CO₂ levels, heat waves, sea level and the health of Virginia agriculture. Despite decades of industrial activity, the commonwealth was found to be doing well.

For example, like in most of the U.S., Virginia agriculture has had regular increases in crop yields, benefiting from technological advancements, modest warming and higher levels of atmospheric CO₂ that boost plant fertilization. Neither was there cause for alarm regarding rising seas, which have exhibited no increase in the rate of natural rise, nor with regard to severe weather, whose worldwide trends have been in a 20-year decline.

Importantly, Virginia’s RGGI participation would make no meaningful difference in the weather. Using the methodology of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the amount of warming averted by eliminating all the commonwealth’s CO₂ emissions was calculated to be 0.0038 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100 — an amount too small to be felt or measured.

Since Virginia’s withdrawal from RGGI, alarmists’ predictions of “existential” coastal flooding, mega-storms and general mayhem have regularly failed to materialize – just as they have for the last 35 years. Moreover, numerous studies – in addition to the CO₂ Coalition report – have refuted the pseudoscience of doomsayers and the negative consequences of climate programs like RGGI have become more apparent. Extreme cases like Germany’s self-inflicted high energy prices and deindustrialization present real cause for alarm.

Increasingly, governments, businesses and voters are questioning those promoting hysteria over the natural changes of a complex – and uncontrollable – climate.

Little wonder that Governor Spanberger offered fiscal arguments for rejoining RGGI rather repeat the tired trope of climate change. Before Youngkin’s 2023 withdrawal, “RGGI generated hundreds of millions of dollars for Virginia,” said Spanberger.

But RGGI can hardly be the best way to raise money, if there is no environmental benefit – and there is none. Forcing the closure of economical power sources like coal and natural gas-fired plants in favor “green” solar and wind facilities – a RGGI objective – is a financial loser for consumers. The electricity rates of RGGI states are higher than the national average and many are close to the highest in the nation.

After six years of debate over whether to join RGGI, Pennsylvania Republican legislators got the Democrat governor last fall to drop the proposal as part of budget negotiations. The state’s participation in RGGI had been projected to increase Pennsylvania electricity rates by 30%.  Leaders of labor unions frequently testified that the threat of RGGI had discouraged billions of dollars of energy investments in the Keystone State.

A CO₂ Coalition examination of the Pennsylvania proposal had described it as “a solution in search of a problem.” Ditto for Old Dominion.

Virginia policymakers should reject RGGI as a bad idea. The commonwealth has no climate crisis and no other good reason to join the consortium.

Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist; executive director of the CO₂ Coalition, Fairfax, Va.; author of “Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know” and “A Very Convenient Warming: How modest warming and more CO2 are benefiting humanity.