Posted on 11/02/2011 2:41:02 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Mitt Romney faces an inconvenient truth on climate change.
While the former Massachusetts governor often touts his decision not to sign up for a regional cap-and-trade compact, he also glosses over a six-year-old set of carbon dioxide rules that his aides touted at the time as the first in the country for electric utilities.
Under Romney’s regulations, finalized in September 2006, Massachusetts’s six largest power plants faced mandatory CO2 limits with several market-friendly compliance options designed to help keep the costs down.
Democrats and environmentalists panned Romney’s rules as weak tea. Many felt burned by the governor’s decision not to join then-New York Republican Gov. George Pataki and other neighboring state leaders in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
But Romney’s problem is now on the other side of the political spectrum as critics on his right said they are troubled by a decision to implement the CO2 limits in the first place.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign, for example, has done its homework. It released a 60-second Web video last month hitting Romney for the CO2 rules, likening them to the Obama administration’s EPA climate policies.
Perry aides last week also circulated news clips on the Romney rules from 2006. They argued that even if Massachusetts didn’t participate in RGGI, Romney still should be held accountable for putting mandatory caps on greenhouse gases.
“Mitt Romney is misleading the American public by criticizing policies he enacted as governor of Massachusetts,” Perry spokesman Mark Miner said. “Mitt Romney has been running for president for six years, but he can’t run from his record.”
If elected president, Romney has said he’d reverse Obama-era environmental rules, including EPA’s endangerment finding that declared carbon dioxide a threat to public health, making it subject to restrictions under the Clean Air Act.
Speaking last week at a fundraiser in Pittsburgh, Romney said he was a skeptic on global warming science. And he recounted his decision on RGGI to explain why he would reject a cap-and-trade system.
“I actually had in Massachusetts a consortium of states that came together with a cap-and-trade program. It was called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative,” he said. “And all the governors, Gov. [George] Pataki and so forth, all signed it. I refused to sign. I do not believe in a cap-and-trade program.”
Romney aides did not respond to a request for comment about the Massachusetts CO2 regulations. Campaign aides told The Wall Street Journal last month that the climate rule came at the end of a lengthy process that started in 2001 with former Republican Gov. Jane Swift.
But when the rules were issued, Romney was front and center to take credit.
In a December 2005 news release announcing the rules would take effect at the start of the new year, Romney said, “Massachusetts continues to be committed to improving air quality for all our citizens. These carbon emission limits will provide real and immediate progress in the battle to improve our environment. They help us accomplish our environmental goals while protecting jobs and the economy.”
The release touted how the limits were the “toughest in the nation,” and it celebrated the assistance of John Holdren, then a Harvard environmental policy professor, and Billy Pizer, then an environmental economist at the D.C. think tank Resources for the Future.
Romney’s critics have pounced on Holdren’s role in the climate rule, noting he’s now the head of Obama’s White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The Perry campaign also highlighted his reliance on Gina McCarthy, the Obama EPA air chief who served Romney at the time as undersecretary for policy in his Executive Office of Environmental Affairs.
On Monday, Pizer said Romney’s CO2 rule didn’t strike him at the time as that big of a deal because it was so narrowly focused on just a few power plants.
“He was trying to burnish his environmental credentials and put the best spin on whatever environmental accomplishments were going on,” said Pizer, now a faculty fellow at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. “I don’t remember thinking at the time it was hugely significant. But of course anything at this point trying to reduce emissions should be viewed as significant.”
“Lisa’s the coach and Gina’s the quarterback” in the work of rolling out new clean air regulations, said Daniel Weiss, an energy and climate policy expert at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank with close ties to the Obama administration. “She’s running the plays, improvising on the line.”
Another Romney environmental adviser in the effort to regulate “greenhouse gases” is now Obama’s Director of Science and Technology Policy, John Holdren. Dr. Holdren has some exotic views: …………..
romney. Spit!
Relative to off-site projects, the new regulations propose a two-tiered system of triggers and safety valves. At first, plants can do offset projects in the northeast region, which keeps technology development and environmental benefits closer to home. However, if the price of available offsets reaches $6.50/ton of emissions for 12 months, firms would then be able to shop for offsets anywhere in the world, where cheaper opportunities might be available – thus protecting ratepayers while providing the same environmental benefit. If the price of offsets climbs yet higher to a point with unacceptable economic impacts, or $10.00/ton, firms can then meet their emissions obligations by paying into a Greenhouse Gas Expendable Trust. The Trust will be used by the state to purchase new offsets or invest in the development of technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
......In the development of greenhouse gas policy, Romney Administration officials have elicited input from environmental and economic policy experts. These include John Holden, professor of environmental policy at Harvard University and chair of the National Commission on Energy Policy and Billy Pizer, an economist at Resources for the Future, an environmental policy think-tank based in Washington D.C.
“A safety valve assures that compliance costs will not rise above acceptable levels and guarantees that the market will continue to function despite any unforeseen, adverse events,” said Billy Pizer. “At an appropriate level, a safety valve makes sense for virtually any market-based emissions reduction policy, but especially for one addressing a cumulative problem like CO2 emissions, where the most important element is a continual, long-term incentive for innovative technologies.”
Elements of a safety valve were included in the successful acid rain trading program and would have helped avert the crisis faced by the RECLAIM program in California, when a shortage pushed nitrogen oxide allowance prices to more than $40,000 per ton, far above the normal market price.
Implementing these regulations represents the latest in a series of initiatives that the Romney administration has undertaken to address air pollution. In 2004, Governor Romney announced the Massachusetts Climate Protection Plan, which laid out a coordinated statewide response to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the climate."......
In addition it has come to light that Mittens resigned as a board member of the mormon owned Marriott Hotel chain sometime back in early 2011. Mittens is a long time porno/smut peddlar and has benefitted financially by being a board member of this hotel chain. now he wants to run as a candidate for these United States?
It’s said that a friend of Mittens in the National Restaurant Assoc ggave Mittens information on Herman Cain sexual harassment case so Mittens could smear Herman and his god-fearing name.
SHAME ON MITTENS
Was that the blockbuster thing?
Geez, whoda thunk it! A random act of journalism from Politicrap.
So please, someone tell me why this has not come up in any of the debates?
“So please, someone tell me why this has not come up in any of the debates?”
For the same reason abortion and gun control haven’t. The debates are run by liberals and it would knock Romney, Huntsman, and that other loon ( Gary Johnson?) out of the race.
I saw last night that C-Span is covering all three hours of the Lincoln-Douglas style debate between Newt and Herman this Saturday. The Texas Tea Party Patriots PAC is putting it on and invited all the candidates. Only Newt and Herman accepted it.
That in itself should give us a better insight on who we should support.
Why aren't they campaigning in Iowa or NH instead of in Houston?
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Maybe because the debate is in Houston and not in Iowa and NH? Just maybe? Geez.
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“If the price of offsets climbs yet higher to a point with unacceptable economic impacts, or $10.00/ton, firms can then meet their emissions obligations by paying into a Greenhouse Gas Expendable Trust. The Trust will be used by the state to purchase new offsets or invest in the development of technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Back door tax revenue system for the State. Petition the “State” to declare CO2 a non pollutant and stop the rent seekers
Bump!
Former President of National Restaurant Association has Ties to the Mitt Romney Campaign
I saw that.
Thanks.
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