Unanimous Verdict at Packed Public Hearings on Climate Law
On Monday, June 14, over 80 people crammed into a standing-room only hearing room on the top floor of a downtown Boston state building, to voice their opinions on the main law regulating the state’s response to global warming. As part of the Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA), public hearings are required to gather input on what percentage below 1990 levels Massachusetts should set carbon emissions reduction goals for 2020. If policymakers have any sense, they will adopt the highest standard allowed by law, and find ways to raise the ceiling even higher: every single one of the 30-odd speakers pushed for the maximum allowable target savings of 25%.
One speaker, a senior from Ipswich, asked for increased public transit funding. Another, with a student environmental group, spoke about preserving the state’s forests. Henrietta Davis, vice-mayor of Cambridge, described energy-efficiency programs which currently benefit suburban residents disproportionately, saying low-income urban residents deserved equal access to the programs. Yet another speaker, an executive with a real estate investment group, said his company had been implementing deep efficiency methods in their properties since 1989, and had seen “an excellent return on investment.”
Testifying for the GJC was Alex Papali of Clean Water Action. Among his points was that “current measures of cost-effectiveness of EE and renewables programs are inadequate, because they fail to integrate critical job creation, economic development and environmental justice criteria- which if taken into account at all are usually dismissed as ‘non-energy benefits.’” In addressing essential equity questions, the state would do well to lower barriers to access for consumers particularly in the 60-120% of median income bracket, he added, since EE resources currently favored upper-income communities.
If emissions reduction targets were not limited to the 10-25% range imposed by the GWSA in 2008, the state might well have been able to set targets even higher. Before public comments began at the hearing, a consultant commissioned by the state set out the findings of a study on the matter: by doing nothing-- that is, staying on the current policy path (aka ‘BAU’ - business as usual)-- there would already be an 18.6% reduction from 1990 levels. And if the state took just the cost effective measures in addition to current policies, the emissions reductions would be on the order of 35%. “Cost effective” measures were defined as either having zero or low cost, or where the savings were greater than the cost to achieve them.
In order to achieve the GWSA’s goal of an 80% reduction by 2050, the state would be wise to begin these measures voluntarily outside the law’s framework. Several people commented that they wished there were some way to achieve this increased savings, but for now Massachusetts residents will have to make do with what seemed like an obvious GWSA target of 25%.
