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Editorial
Those who are hoping to combat manmade climate change in meaningful ways can take heart in a couple of victories recently – one at the state level and another in our own back yard.
A Floyd County circuit court judge ruled last month that Gov. Glenn Youngkin overstepped his authority in pulling Virginia out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an 11-state compact that requires power plants to pay for their carbon emissions. RGGI generated hundreds of millions of dollars for Virginia over a period of years that was being used to pay for energy efficiency measures and flood prevention projects.
The court in Floyd County became involved in the litigation, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, because of a lawsuit brought by the Association of Energy Conservation Professionals. The Floyd County-based entity has been using RGGI funds to pay for energy-saving measures that benefit low-income families.
Judge C. Randall Lowe’s ruling held that the governor could not unilaterally withdraw Virginia from RGGI. General Assembly approval is required because the 2020 legislation directing the state to enter into the multi-state compact can only be reversed by similar legislative action. The governor contends that RGGI is a hidden tax on electricity that he was the authority to eliminate. He has indicated his intention to appeal the ruling.
The local victory for renewable energy advocates we’re alluding to is the Nov. 25 action by the Rockbridge County Board of Supervisors to approve, by a 3-2 vote, the Warm Run 3.0 megawatts solar project that is to generate enough electricity to provide power for 600 homes that would otherwise have been produced by burning fossil fuels. This is the fourth utility-scale solar array that has been approved in the county to date.
As encouraging as these two small victories may seem in the battle to reverse years of man-made climate change brought on by the unfettered burning of fossil fuels, the triumphs pale into insignificance when one considers pending changes in national policies on climate change. The incoming Trump administration has vowed to reverse course on all efforts to counter what most scientists view as an existential threat to life on our planet.
Donald Trump has made it clear that he intends, as he did during his first term, to pull the U.S. out of the U.N. Paris Agreement, the international treaty that binds a multitude of nations to a major collective effort to combat climate change. Trump has nominated people to head the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Interior who don’t believe in the science behind human-caused climate change. According to The New York Times, initiatives are to be undertaken to repeal pollution limits on automobiles, power p102 What it all comes down to is whether or not to accept the views of most scientists that human activity is indeed causing the warming of the planet that’s leading to the frequency of extreme weather events and rising ocean levels that are endangering coastal communities. Is climate change real? If so, is there anything we can do to reverse it and prevent disastrous effects that now appear inevitable? Can we save ourselves from a pending catastrophe?
Our hope and belief is that we can, if only we can muster the will to do so. Others view the situation very differently. Of course, only one of these conflicting views will prove correct. Future generations will learn who was right.
