DV Journal

Pennsylvania State Treasurer Stacy Garrity joined the growing list of Republicans calling on President Joe Biden to withdraw his nominee for a top Federal Reserve post. 

Many Republicans believe Sarah Bloom Raskin, Biden’s pick to become the Fed’s top banking regulator, is too extreme for the job. On Wednesday, a group of 48 congressional Republicans sent a letter to the White House asking Biden to pull Raskin’s nomination as vice-chair of supervision, warning her past statements indicated she would “irreparably politicize the Federal Reserve and destroy what remains of its credibility and independence.”

Two weeks ago, Garrity joined a group of state financial officers who released their own letter expressing reservations.

“We oppose Ms. Raskin’s radical banking and economic views and are deeply concerned that she would use the supervisory authority as Vice-Chair for Supervision at the Federal Reserve Bank to disrupt the private banking sector, reliable energy supplies, and the U.S. economy,” the state financial officers wrote.

Republicans charge that acting on her progressive climate change views would result in severe job losses in the petroleum, natural gas, and coal industries. Democrats say the job losses are countered by those that would be created in the green energy sector or jobs would be lost anyway due to the continuing climate crisis that they believe confronts the world.

“The nominee is a risk to reliable energy companies and the millions of people who are employed by them here in Pennsylvania and across the country,” Garrity said. “[Raskin] has claimed that the fossil fuel industry is a ‘dying industry’ and actively worked against it. Meanwhile, the Energy Information Administration’s preliminary data for 2020 show that energy produced from petroleum, natural gas, and coal accounted for about 79 percent of total U.S. primary energy production.

“These energy industries are critical to our nation’s economy, and it’s clear that Ms. Raskin is not the right person to serve in this position. If President Biden doesn’t withdraw the nomination, the Senate should swiftly reject it,” Garrity added.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) had similar objections to Raskin.

“Today’s hearing is not just about vetting [Biden’s nominees], it’s really about the Fed’s independence and whether or not we’re going to abandon a core part of our democracy,” Toomey said.

Democrats argued many of these attacks have been overblown and are politically motivated.

“We have seen a coordinated effort by some to paint her as a radical… that characterization requires a suspension of common sense,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

Many of the objections to Raskin stem from a New York Times piece she wrote in 2020 entitled, “Why Is the Fed Spending So Much Money on a Dying Industry?”

“The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare just how vulnerable the United States is to sudden, catastrophic shocks. Climate change poses the next big threat. Ignoring it, particularly to the benefit of fossil fuel interests, is a risk we can’t afford,” she wrote. 

In the article, she lays out how she thinks the fossil fuel industries had fallen short of addressing the climate crisis and accrued impossible amounts of debt as they continued to expand, often without turning a profit. She argued continuing to fund those industries “undermines urgent efforts to counter surging carbon dioxide and methane emissions, which are bringing us closer to the catastrophe of an unliveably hot planet.”

Not all Republicans consider that line of thinking controversial.

“Among the future trends that will impact our national security is climate change,” said Republican former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. When retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis took office as secretary of defense, he urged the armed forces to battle the effects of global climate change.

“Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today,” Mattis said in written testimony addressed to the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2017. He claimed that, “While Trump downplayed the problem, his Pentagon quietly continued to follow a ‘climate change adaptation roadmap’ to protect against catastrophic storms that put coastal bases at tremendous risk.”

The Republican criticism that addressing these concerns would have serious economic ramifications is serious. In their letter to Biden, Garrity and the other fiscal officers explained that they feared Raskin “would use the supervisory authority as vice-chair for supervision at the Federal Reserve Bank to disrupt the private banking sector, reliable energy supplies, and the U.S. economy.”

To switch to a fully green economy would be an enormous undertaking and might ultimately cost millions of jobs in the fossil fuel sectors. Still, many progressive Democrats fear that the time for politics as usual in confronting the climate issue has ended and demand action.

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Pennsylvanians are shaking their head at New York’s governor for supporting what would be the first statewide ban on natural gas connections for new buildings.

“The proposed ban on natural gas hook-ups for new buildings takes virtue signaling to new and even more absurd heights,” says Leo Knepper, political director of Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania (CAP).

“It’s extremely shortsighted,” says Dan Weaver, president and executive director at Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association (PIOGA).

Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.) views the ban as a way of helping the environment.

“To make real progress on climate change, it’s time to tackle major sources of pollution head-on, ensure greener housing is available to all New Yorkers, and pave the way toward a more sustainable future,” the governor said after her recent State of the State address. “This transformative investment in green infrastructure will cement New York’s status at the forefront of climate action and ensure equity in our transition to a cleaner, greener state.”

Hochul’s move follows New York City, which passed its own ban on gas-powered heaters, stoves, and boilers beginning in 2023. Her blueprint calls for the state to pass legislation requiring all new buildings to use zero-emissions sources of heat by 2027, which would end the use of natural gas.

Critics say that is short-sighted.

“If we look at the switch from coal to natural gas, look at the benefits that have occurred just in air quality from there,” Weaver told Delaware Valley Journal. “The fact of the matter is they want to electrify everything, but the majority of the production of electricity in the northeast comes from natural gas!”

Information from the federal government’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) confirms natural gas does generate a lot of electricity in New York state. Nuclear and hydropower also contribute.

“Natural gas fuels five of the state’s 10 largest power plants by capacity, and natural gas-fired power plants account for more than two-thirds of New York’s generating capacity,” says EIA.gov.

The state that could be providing that natural gas to New York is right next door in Pennsylvania, the second-largest natural gas-producing state in the nation. (Texas is number one.)

“If not for the advent of modern natural gas development, the United States could not claim much of the significant clean air and climate progress we have achieved,” said Marcellus Shale Coalition president David Callahan. “If New York is truly serious about addressing climate matters and ensuring around-the-clock affordable power, the state should pursue policies that preserve energy choice and encourage natural gas generation.”

Gregory Wrightstone, executive director of the CO2 Coalition, says the ban is a solution in search of a problem.

“New York’s plan to ban all new hookups of natural gas to buildings throughout the Empire State is a horribly misguided attempt to cure a non-existent crisis,” says Wrightstone. “This proposal would restrict New Yorkers’ options on heating homes and cooking meals to one imposed on them by government dictate (when) natural gas is an affordable, abundant and clean-burning fuel already used safely by millions of citizens across the state.”

Restricting citizens’ fuel choices to only heat and cook with electricity would significantly increase demands on an electric grid that Wrightstone says is already stressed by increased reliance on intermittent energy from wind and solar.

“Texas’ near-collapse of its entire electric grid last February should be a wake-up call to regulators across the country that renewable energy just cannot meet the demands of a growing economy,” says Wrightstone. “A ban on new natural gas hookups will increase costs and decrease grid reliability.”

New York is not alone in the push to ban natural gas from new construction. Deep-blue cities like Berkeley, Calif., and Seattle, Wash. have imposed similar measures. In response, 20 states have proposed or passed laws preventing municipalities from cutting willing customers, including Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania Senate passed such a bill, sponsored by Environmental Resources and Energy Committee chair Sen. Gene Yaw (R-Lycoming), with a vet0-proof majority.

“Banning specific fuel sources in pursuit of ‘clean energy’ makes zero sense in Philadelphia and beyond,” Yaw said in an editorial published last week. “Protecting energy choices for consumers means residents can pursue “cleaner” electricity sources if they want to or can afford to, while not punishing those who don’t have the option.”

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It wasn’t front and center at the climate change summit, COP26, in Glasgow, but it was whispered about informally, in the corridors, and over meals.

For politicians, it is flammable. For some religions, it is heresy. Yet it begs a hearing: the growth of the global population.

While the world struggles to decarbonize, saving it from sea level rise and the other disasters associated with climate change, there is no recognition officially anywhere that population plays a critical part.

People do things that cause climate change from burning coal to raising beef cattle. A lot of people equal a lot of pollution equals a big climate impact, obvious and incontrovertible.

In 1950, the global population was at just over 2.5 billion. This year, it is calculated at 7.9 billion. Roughly by mid-century, it is expected to increase by another 2 billion.

There is a ticking bomb, and it is us.

There was one big, failed attempt to restrict population growth: China’s one-child policy. Besides being draconian, it didn’t work well and has been abandoned.

China is awash with young men seeking nonexistent brides. While the program was in force from 1980 to 2015, girls were aborted and boys were saved. The result: A massive gender imbalance. One doubts that any country will ever, however authoritarian its rule, try that again.

There is a long history to population alarm, going back to the 18th century and Thomas Malthus, an English demographer and economist who gave birth to what is known as Malthusian theory. This states that food production won’t be able to keep up with the growth in the human population, resulting in famine and war; and the only way forward is to restrict population growth.

Malthus’s theory was very wrong in the 18th century. But it had unfortunate effects, which included a tolerance of famine in populations of European empire countries, like India. It also played a role in the Irish Great Famine of 1845-49, when some in England thought that this famine, caused by a potato blight, was the fulfillment of Malthusian theory, and inhibited efforts to help the starving Irish. Shame on England.

The idea of population outgrowing resources was reawakened in 1972 with a controversial report titled “Limits to Growth” from the Club of Rome, a global think tank.

This report led to battles over the supply of oil when the energy crisis broke the next year. The antigrowth, population-limiting side found itself in a bitter fight with the technologists who believed that technology would save the day. It did. More energy came to market, oil resources were discovered worldwide, including in the previously unexplored Southern Hemisphere.

Since that limits-to-growth debate, the world population has increased inexorably. Now, if growth is the problem, the problem needs to be examined more urgently. I think 2022 is the year that the examination will begin.

Clearly, no country will wish to go down the failed Chinese one-child policy, and anyway, only authoritarian governments could contemplate it. Free people in democratic countries don’t handle dictates well: Take, for example, the difficulty of enforcing mask-wearing in the time of the COVID pandemic in the United States, Germany, Britain, France, and elsewhere.

If we are going to talk of a leveling off world population we have to look elsewhere, away from dictates to other subtler pressures.

There is a solution, and the challenge to the world is whether we can get there fast enough.

That solution is prosperity. When people move into the middle class, they tend to have fewer children. So much so that the traditional populations are in decline in the United States, Japan, and in much of Europe — even in nominally Roman Catholic France. The data is skewed by immigration in all those countries — except Japan, where it is particularly stark. It shows population stability can happen without dictatorial social engineering.

In the United States, the not-so-secret weapon may be no more than the excessive cost of college.

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Pennsylvania is an energy powerhouse. We are the nation’s number three energy producer, number three coal producer, and the number two natural gas provider. Not only do we meet our own energy needs, but we also meet the needs of other states that depend on us to keep their own energy grids up and running. Sixty plants powered by fossil fuels account for over 60 percent of Pennsylvania’s electric generation.

It may make some sense for legislators in the 11 states who joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) to support the pact. After all, those states do not come close to the number of electricity production facilities we have here in Pennsylvania. Those states will not have to deal with the effects of rising consumer prices, plant closures, and job loss on a mass scale.

The carbon tax imposed by RGGI will result in immediate job loss across our energy sector. According to the Department of Environmental Protection, all five remaining coal power plants will be shuttered within a year of enactment. Not only will those workers be out of the job, but so will many of those in the coal production business which feeds into these power plants.

As companies look to invest in future natural gas facilities, are they going to invest in Pennsylvania or instead invest in states like Ohio and West Virginia who will not be subject to RGGI’s burdensome regulations and taxes?

The acceleration of Pennsylvania’s booming energy industry has been a blessing to our state. Many of our coal and natural gas energy production plants are in economically distressed communities. These areas were decimated as Pennsylvania’s manufacturing base shifted overseas in the past few decades.

Counties like Indiana, Fayette, and Montour have seen energy industry jobs provide a lifeline to the community. We are told by proponents of RGGI that those who are soon to lose their jobs will have to find jobs elsewhere such as in the renewable energy sector. There is no guarantee of that industry providing anywhere near the same amount of positions and pay that are enjoyed by fossil fuel energy sector workers. We all remember the failure of Solyndra in 2011 after being propped up with millions from the federal government. Renewable energy jobs cannot be relied on to replace the damage of RGGI.

Immediate job loss will not be the only negative impact of RGGI. Like all taxes, the carbon tax will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher electricity rates. A report by the Penn State Center for Energy Law and Policy found that consumers would pay up to $2 billion more in electricity costs over nine years.

Energy costs in the U.S. are already up by 25 percent compared to last year. Inflation in the economy as a whole has compounded the struggles of lower and middle-class families. We cannot afford to make high energy costs permanent by entering RGGI.

Supporters of RGGI say that billions in revenue from the carbon tax will be generated for the general fund and “re-invested” into struggling communities. I would much rather have money kept in the pockets of the everyday people as opposed to being subject to misguided spending by legislators and bureaucrats.

Lastly, RGGI will have adverse implications for national security. Crucial American allies in Europe rely on Pennsylvania natural gas imports to offset dependence on imports from the predatory government of Russia.

For example, vulnerabilities in the face of a more hostile Moscow include economic blackmail due to heavy reliance on Russian oil and gas. To counter this threat, nations like Lithuania and Poland built Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminals as a way to reduce dependence on Russian energy. Due to cost and accessibility, most of the LNG imported thus far has come from Norway.

Imports from the United States began in 2017 and European leaders hope to expand the amount of LNG they purchase from Pennsylvania in the future. RGGI’s carbon tax to stunt the natural gas industry will make that quite difficult.

Some will say that any of the aforementioned adverse effects of RGGI pale in comparison to the cost of inaction to combat climate change. But Pennsylvania has already been making steady progress to limit CO2 emissions.  According to the Consumer Energy Alliance, emissions in Pa. have dropped by 18 percent since 1990. Any further drops in emissions resulting from RGGI will be negligible. Fossil fuel-powered energy plants will simply relocate to less restrictive states and release the same amount of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Every RGGI participant state joined the pact after receiving approval from their respective legislatures. Governor Wolf, as he has done throughout his tenure, acted unilaterally to join our state to RGGI  after not getting what he wanted from the General Assembly.

This sets a dangerous precedent. The General Assembly is the body that is closest to the people of Pennsylvania. No Governor, regardless of political party, should have unchecked unilateral power to impose a tax and enter our state into such a consequential interstate pact. This week, the state Senate acted by voting to disapprove the regulation to join RGGI. Next up is a vote in the House of Representatives. Following passage there, Gov. Tom Wolf will presumably use his veto pen and a legal battle in the courts will ensue.

One thing is for sure. RGGI will do far more harm than good.

The Wolf administration wants the Keystone State to have a carbon-free electric grid by 2050. But not all Pennsylvanians are amped by the idea.

“I think it’s very good for Pennsylvania that Wolf has only one more year left in his term of office and he can’t run for governor again,” says chairman of the Pennsylvania Environmental Resources and Energy Committee Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler County). “These types of policies are just going to drive up the cost of energy that we all need in our daily lives.”

Gov. Tom Wolf (D) announced the Pennsylvania Climate Action Plan 2021 on Wednesday, calling for statewide action on climate change by all sectors of the state.

“As thousands of Pennsylvanians try to recover from historic flooding and tornadoes related to the remnants of Ida this month, the message is clear: we must move now out of a reactive mode on climate change,” Wolf said.

The Wolf administration’s Department of Environmental Protection echoed the governor.

“As a result of increasing greenhouse gas emissions from human activity, Pennsylvania’s average temperature has risen nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900, bringing more heatwaves and increased intensity of extreme weather events, including heavy rainfall and flooding,” said DEP in a statement ahead of the climate plan announcement. “Pennsylvania is on course to climb another 5.9 degrees by the middle decades of this century.”

There is no data showing any increased intensity in extreme weather. And there has been no increase in flooding.

“These conclusions of the IPCC, indicate that it is simply incorrect [emphasis in original] to claim that on climate time scales the frequency or intensity of extreme weather and climate events has increased for: Flooding, drought (meteorological or hydrological), tropical cyclones, winter storms, thunderstorms, tornadoes, hail, lightning or extreme winds,” writes Professor Roger Pielke, Jr. of the University of Colorado.

There are 18 recommendations in Wolf’s Climate Action Plan. They include updating and enforcing building codes, improving energy efficiency in the residential and commercial sectors, increasing the use of on-site solar power in those sectors, adding to the number of electric vehicles, and using programs and incentives to increase energy efficiency in agriculture.

“We’ll get our biggest greenhouse gas emission reductions from creating a carbon-free electricity grid that uses renewable and nuclear energy,” said DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell at a virtual press conference.

“In a world of wishful thinking, policy changes should be based on sound science so that new regulations are reasonable, cost effective, and achievable with existing technology,” says David N. Taylor, president and CEO of Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association.

“Gov. Wolf’s  ‘Action Plan’ fails all of these bright-line tests in moving the goal posts on Pennsylvania’s productive sector,” says David Taylor. “Our manufacturers require reliable and affordable energy to add value and satisfy customers, and private sector innovation has led to dramatic decreases in energy-related emissions over the past two decades.”

As these innovations advance, Taylor says we will continue to drive economic growth while improving our environment, all without unnecessary and costly intervention from  Wolf Administration.

“Among those who can’t afford such absurd illusions are more than 8,000 workers whose livelihoods depend on coal-fired plants in Indiana and Armstrong counties and hundreds of businesses and millions of consumers whose profitability and wealth would be eroded by higher electricity prices resulting from Wolf’s so-called green grid,” says Gordon Tomb, senior fellow for the Commonwealth Foundation.

Leo Knepper at Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania (CAP) agrees.

“Wolf is living in some sort of an alternate reality if he thinks that something like a zero-carbon energy grid is desirable or realistic for Pennsylvania,” says Leo Knepper, political director for Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania (CAP). “A paper released in 2016 estimated that the clean energy mandates in place at that time would cost the commonwealth over $700 million in higher electricity costs and 11,000 jobs by 2025.”

The impact of the types of mandates the governor is now suggesting would be far worse, says Knepper.

“Between 2000 and 2018, carbon emissions from energy production dropped by 20 percent, and that’s not due to new mandates,” says Knepper. “Carbon output dropped because natural gas became more price competitive and it is a cleaner-burning fuel.”

As lower-emission energy generation becomes more competitive on a price per kilowatt-hour, Knepper says its consumption will increase and carbon output will naturally decrease further.

“Government trying to front-run the technology and force adoption will result in much higher costs, job losses, and a lower standard of living overall,” says Knepper.

Earlier this year, U.S. Steel announced its plans to cancel a $1.5 billion investment in Mon Valley Works, a decision that affected 3,000 workers. Critics blamed it on the environmental policies from Wolf and President Joe Biden.

“The loss of this $1.5 billion project is a devastating blow to the economy of southwestern Pennsylvania and a slap in the face to the hard-working blue-collar families who were counting on these jobs,” said Pennsylvania state Republican legislators in a May statement. “It is a clear reminder that we need a commonsense, cooperative strategy on energy and the economy.”

“What they announced is the kind of socialist pie-in-the-sky that fits well with Biden’s agenda and AOC’s agenda and The Squad’s agenda from D.C.,” says Metcalfe. “I think Wolf is certainly trying to attract attention from Biden so that when he’s done harming Pennsylvania through his gubernatorial work that he may be able to attract Biden to try to bring him into his administration.”