Gov. Youngkin continues to work on gutting the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a crucial and highly popular multi-state cooperative effort to rein in greenhouse gasses. He couldn’t get the General Assembly to change the law that brought Virginia into RGGI, so now he’s trying to use changes to administrative regulations to get what he wants. We need to stand up for RGGI! Between now and the end of March, please post a comment opposing the governor’s actions on the State’s feedback portal.
Some background information:
“…RGGI is one of Virginia’s top global warming solutions and is currently under attack. We need you to show your support for RGGI and protect this critical program.” Environment Virginia, 3/15/23
“Gov. Glenn Youngkin wants to remove Virginia from the initiative, also known as RGGI — pronounced “Reggie” — a consortium of 12 East Coast states where energy producers trade emission reductions for credits, or buy credits to emit carbon dioxide past the capped amount.” Richmond Times-Dispatch, 3/16/23
“At a press conference organized by the League of Conservation Voters Thursday, William and Mary student Philip Ignatoff touted the benefits of the funding RGGI participation is generating and argued Virginia should lower energy bills through electricity rate reform.” Virginia Mercury, 3/16/23
“Gov. Glenn Youngkin has proposed significant investments to begin to catch up after decades of underfunding critical mental health care programs. While I applaud the governor for his intentions, I’d be remiss if I didn’t remind him and my colleagues in the General Assembly that these proposed investments should be viewed as the floor, not the ceiling. If our goal is to keep people out of crisis, then we have more work to do. The governor’s plan is a crisis-first response, closely resembling that of Arizona’s. The premise of the plan is centered around regional crisis centers with the idea that these centers would service individuals in need faster, get police officers out of emergency rooms, and take pressure off of ERs and hospitals — all policies that we can agree on and ultimately support. There’s no question that we need this response, but instead of having a “crisis-first mentality” we can do more to fix our broken system now.”
It’s easy to forget the many significant benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act that the Dems pushed through way back in… August (seems like forever ago, no!?). Senator Warner put out a 
