Todd Smith: Pumping the brakes on TCI

By Todd Smith | The Caledonian Record

On Wednesday the Georgetown Climate Center unveiled its long awaited proposal to retard climate change by slapping an annually increasing tax on all gasoline and diesel fuel used in transportation throughout 12 Northeastern states.

Almost every environmental and climate change activist group, unable for the past four years to get the Vermont legislature to even vote on creating a carbon tax to achieve the same end, designated the Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI) as its must-pass “banner” idea for 2020.

Todd Smith

Todd M. Smith is the publisher of the Caledonian Record.

The advocates had barely stopped cheering TCI’s unveiling when one brave Governor, Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, rained on their parade.

New Hampshire announced it won’t join the controversial regional TCI compact just hours after a draft policy was released Tuesday. Sununu cited the cost burden on drivers.

“I will not force Granite Staters to pay more for their gas just to subsidize other states’ crumbling infrastructure,” the Governor told the Boston Herald. “New Hampshire is already taking substantial steps to curb our carbon emissions, and this initiative, if enacted, would institute a new gas tax by up to 17 cents per gallon while only achieving minimal results. This program is a financial boondoggle and the people of New Hampshire will never support it.”

Sununu’s office added that “rural communities would be left at a severe disadvantage if New Hampshire participated in the TCI, as drivers will bear the brunt of the artificially higher gas prices.” Sununu spokesman Jared Chicoine added that “This proposal is a huge hit to the wallets of rural drivers. The data makes it clear that — even without the TCI proposal — the market is already projected to reach many of the same environmental benchmarks.”

Good for Gov. Sununu.

He deserves thanks from most local folks, including motorists, delivery people (and those receiving deliveries), school bus operators, milk haulers, ambulance companies, police forces, taxi drivers, fuel tankers, small business employees and owners, as well as the economies that rely on snowmobilers and ATVs … just to name a few.

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott has long declared his strong opposition to a carbon tax. The TCI — which taxes motor fuel based on its carbon content — clearly is one. We fully expect him to follow Gov. Sununu’s lead for the good of all Vermont’s poor, and remote, residents.

Todd M. Smith is the publisher of the Caledonian Record, where this editorial first appeared. He lives in St. Johnsbury.

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Infrogmation and Todd Smith

10 thoughts on “Todd Smith: Pumping the brakes on TCI

  1. Time for John Klar and Meg Hansen and common sense. Someone has to put the lid on the legislative branch. Concerned people will back them, not the shepople.

  2. Democrats and their CARBON tax for more wind and solar are absolutely nuts.
    They should push for more hydro power.

    Hydropower is one of the cleanest of power sources.

    Almost no CO2/kWh on an A to Z basis, and certainly near-zero toxic particulate emissions and near-zero toxic gas emissions per kWh, much less than wind and solar.

    It is true building the water storage reservoirs to ensure CONTINUOUS hydropower causes environmental impact, but the alternative is mining rare earth metals in a far dirtier manner in China to build an equivalent capacity of far more expensive battery storage, and for rare earth metals for solar panels and wind turbines.

    Vermont would be well served to obtain additional STEADY hydropower from Hydro Quebec at about 5.6 c/kWh; the low-cost electricity would boost its anemic, near-zero, real-growth economy far more than building out expensive, variable, intermittent, grid-disturbing wind and solar at about 10 c/kWh, excluding additional grid and battery investments.

  3. A Carbon Tax will accomplish nothing in reducing the impacts of climate change. Its another unnecessary transfer of wealth. On a global scale whatever Vermont Climate Zealots fantasies might be. The fact is it will change nothing on a global scale except transfer wealth, lower our standard of living and impose a bunch of unnecessary time wasting regulations on everyone.

    I am not a climate change denier. It exists. It has existed as long as the Earth has existed and it will go on uninterrupted forever. The way to deal with a natural cycle is for us to adapt to it and stop being so pompous to think we can do anything about it. The seas are rising, who was stupid enough to build so close to the shore then expect the seal evel to be static? You know the native Americans would visit the Shore in the summer and move inland for the winter. They had temporary shelter because they expected storms.

    I hear how the storms we see are more severe than ever. Really! How long have we had good climate data in this country about 250 years and much of that is pretty crude. But given that we are seeing changes. Yes it’s part of a cycle. ADAPT!

    No Carbon Tax. Not Now! Not Ever!.
    Time to clean House in Montpelier and while we’re at it the Senate too in 2020. Time for common sense and realistic vision 2020.

  4. The same entrenched bureaucrat and legislator RE folks, who already spent about $3 billion during the past 20 years.
    They have INCREASING STATE CO2 EMISSIONS to prove how ineffective their measures have been.
    Now they want even more money to implement their NEW TCI agenda.

    Vote them out in 2020.
    Get rid of the entrenched, Shumlin-installed RE bureaucracy, Vermont’s very own DEEP STATE
    Shut down Efficiency Vermont and save $60 million per year is electric bill SURCHARGES

    Vermont among the least transparent states in the US
    The 10 least transparent are Connecticut ranking last, North Carolina ranked second from last, VERMONT RANKED THIRD FROM LAST, Nebraska, New Mexico, Alaska, Missouri, New Jersey, Illinois, California and Michigan.

    Their agenda would be just as ineffective, and would do next to nothing, except grow the state bureaucracy, and make Vermont even less competitive relative to other states, with people leaving, companies leaving or not even considering Vermont as a place for doing business, potholes and infrastructure decay everywhere, stagnant real wages, and mediocre test scores on education while spending the highest amount per student in the US.

    The list is very long.

    When is this un-American “government-can-do-everything idiocy” finally going to stop?
    Who is going to finance it?
    What are they doing to make Vermont MORE attractive for business?

  5. Happy day, it’s encouraging to see someone with a modicum of common sense stepping up to the plate and knocking this hair brained proposal out of the park.

  6. I am glad Sununu had the insight and courage to act; keep New Hampshire out of the ill conceived TCI.

    Scott has to show similar courage, because this is OUR HARD EARNED VERMONT money going OUT OF STATE. This a CARBON TAX through and through. Veto it.

    Anybody in Montpelier agreeing to that would be doing a grave disservice to already struggling Vermonters who elected them and who will un-elect them!!

    Those OUT OF STATE folks will decide how to spend the money on whatever programs and projects they can fantasize about.

    Macron in France proposed gasoline and diesel taxes and all he got was yellow vest protests ALREADY FOR TWO YEARS.

  7. If governor Scott intends to run in 2020 we need to know now which direction he is running in, a finger in the wind when he gets around to it just isn’t good enough.

    Most Vermonters just can’t afford to prop up the rest of the world for the sake of a crisis that is not a crisis in Vermont, especially one that creates an even more unaffordable state for most of us.

    Our affordability crisis is here and now, why make it worse on the promise of new green jobs that may never come even in the distant future.

    Invest in a discipline for an affordable today and say no to “TCI”!

    • We need to start investing in Today, make decisions that reflect immediate savings for our citizens!

      There is no payback in Tomorrow if it never comes!

  8. Hey Governor Scott, Governor Sununu stated “I will not force Granite Staters to pay more
    for their gas just to subsidize other states’ crumbling infrastructure,”

    He must be looking at Vermont’s ” crumbling infrastructure,” or he’s just a Governor with
    a set………………looks out for his constituents, not an agenda !!

    Governor, stop the foolishness

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