With veto, Gov. Wolf keeps key climate change initiative breathing. Why should you care? – By Charles Thompson (Pennlive) / January 11, 2022
Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed a legislative effort to block Pennsylvania’s entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multi-state cap and trade program the governor has made the biggest piece to date of his second-term plunge into the fight to limit global warming by reducing carbon emissions from power plants.
Wolf’s goal has been to get Pennsylvania into RGGI this year, before he leaves office in next January, helping to address what he sees as an existential threat to life as we know it in the Keystone State.
“While the Republican-controlled General Assembly has failed to take any measures to address climate change,” Wolf said Monday in announcing the veto, “by joining RGGI, my administration will take a historic, proactive, and progressive approach that will have significant positive environmental, public health, and economic impacts.”
But we’re still at least a few months from a hard requirement for Pennsylvania’s commercial power plants – the engines that literally keep your entertainment centers entertaining, your kitchens cooking and your battery-powered devices charged up – to make their first purchases of allowances for each ton of carbon dioxide they release.
