Sticking with the Paris Accords

In the wake of Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accords, a bunch of governors, mayors and business executives have announced their intention to stick with the Paris commitments. There has also been active organization in support of the agreement among state legislators (you can read the details at the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators website); in Montana, a group of us sent the letter below to Governor Bullock, urging him to join in the effort.

Dear Governor Bullock:

As legislators who are profoundly concerned about the threat of climate change, we applaud your recent statements regarding the danger to the people of Montana posed by President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accords. Like you, we recognize that climate change can only be arrested through international collective action that includes the committed participation of the United States. In withdrawing from the Paris accords, the President has abandoned that commitment, and, sadly, American global leadership in general. While it is true that the remaining signatories have pledged to forge ahead, we believe that the accords have been seriously destabilized, and the potential consequences of that destabilization, for Montana and indeed the whole world, are extraordinarily serious.

But all is not lost. Numerous governors, state legislatures, mayors and businesses have stated their intention to honor the United States’ Paris commitments despite the President’s decision to withdraw them. We believe that these actions are essential to sustaining the Paris agreements until the Federal government is once again able to conduct itself in a responsible manner, and we believe that Montana should join in that effort.

Specifically, we believe that Montana, under your direction, should commit itself to firm, quantitative, and verifiable reductions in statewide greenhouse gas emissions.

We recognize that technically, economically and politically such a commitment will be very challenging, but we are confident that it is within the resources of your office to initiate the analysis and planning required to put emissions reduction efforts in place, and we stand ready to work with you as we move forward. We believe that the efforts of Governor Schweitzer’s Climate Change Advisory Commission in 2008 and of the Department of Environmental Quality in 2014 (in response to the EPA’s Clean Power Plan) provide useful models of how to proceed as well as an important existing cache of information regarding emissions reduction strategies.

Regardless of how they are undertaken, we believe that the following are the minimum necessary steps for developing and implementing an emissions reductions plan:

1.     Development of an emissions inventory and monitoring system capable of verifying that target reductions are being met.

2.     Identification of effective strategies for reducing emissions. Many of these - particularly those associated with electrical generation, such as improved efficiency, replacement of fossil fuels with renewables, carbon capture and storage, and so forth - are already well known. Others, especially those related to the transportation and industrial sectors, less so.

3.     Determination of the cost of various strategies and of the least cost combination of strategies capable of producing targeted emissions reductions.

4.     Analysis of the policy measures and, in particular, the legislation required to implement the least costly combination of strategies. This analysis should include market-based policies such as carbon taxes, offsets and bubbles, cap and trade, interstate and intraregional emissions trading, and the like.

5.     Because capping emissions will inevitably lead to a transformation in the way energy is produced and transportation is managed, an assessment of the impacts of the policy on adversely affected communities, industries, occupations and income groups is essential, as well as the identification of measures needed to ameliorate those impacts.

We understand that mandating and achieving meaningful reductions in the state’s greenhouse gas emissions is going to be no easy feat. We understand as well the compelling logic of doing nothing, avoiding the costs of action, and benefiting from the efforts of others. But that logic, compelling as it might be, is myopic. If it applies in Montana, it applies with equal force in California and Hawaii and China and France, and ultimately leads to paralysis. To see beyond that wrongheaded logic requires vision, creativity, and the courage to risk self-sacrifice. In a word, it requires leadership. In our view, to the grave peril of the nation and the world, President Trump does not understand and refuses to exercise the leadership required of him. And so we ask you to step forward, and pledge to support you in this effort.

Rep. Kim Abbott
Rep. Laurie Bishop
Sen. Dick Barrett
Rep. Bryce Bennett
Rep. Zach Brown
Rep. Willis Curdy
Rep. Amanda Curtis
Rep. Mary Ann Dunwell
Rep. Janet Ellis
Sen. Tom Facey
Rep. Dave Fern
Rep. John Fleming
Rep. Mofle Funk
Sen. Jen Gross
Rep. Jim Hamilton
Rep. Ellie Boldman Hill
Rep. Denise Hayman
Sen. Margie MacDonald
Sen. Sue Malek
Rep. Shane Morigeau
Rep. Andrea Olsen
Sen. Mike Phillips
Sen. JP Pomnichowski
Rep. Marilyn Ryan
Sen. Diane Sands
Rep. Kathy Swanson
Sen. Cynthia Wolken
Rep. Tom Woods

City Commissioner Andres Hallway, Helena
City Commissioner Rob Farris-Olsen, Helena
Mayor Bob Kelly, Great Falls
Mayor Carson Taylor, Bozeman
County Commissioner Jean Curtiss, Missoula
County Commissioner Nicole Rowley, Missoula
County Commissioner Dave Strohmaier, Missoula 

Swiss Cheese

Not for the first time, Fred Thomas is about to make my head explode.

In a YPR interview with Chuck Johnson yesterday, Thomas* suggested that in order to wind up the current legislative session, he (and his caucus, one presumes) need to strike a deal with Governor Steve Bullock. The way it’s supposed to work, the Republicans will throw their support behind an infrastructure bonding bill - which Bullock really wants -  if the Governor will back a bunch of selective tax cuts – which the Republicans really want. Of course it’s not just Republican legislators who like these tax cuts. The beneficiaries – international corporations who shield their Montana profits from taxation, high income venture capitalists, telecommunications companies, high rollers who promise to build data centers, companies that are required (oh, the outrage of it!) to install pollution control equipment – also think they are pretty peachy.

What I don’t get is how Thomas can keep a straight face when he proposes a deal like this and then claim, in the same breath, to be fiscally responsible. What we’re gonna do, apparently, is swallow hard and borrow a bunch of money, and then take a big bite out of the future revenue stream we need to pay the money back! How does that compute? And if we are going to be building infrastructure with the money we borrow, why in God’s green earth shouldn’t all these folks agitating for tax breaks help pay for it?

Thomas, bred-in-the-bone supply-sider that he is, will no doubt tell you that these tax cuts will more than pay for themselves! That's because if we offer a tidy "incentive" to these footloose outfits, they swear they'll come to Montana. And if we don't, they’ll go somewhere else. The way Thomas puts it, we need to make Montana “competitive” so they’ll set up shop here. And we know that because they tell us so, over and over again.

When, if ever, will we learn that these guys dangle the same bag of gold in front of the noses of every state legislature in the country? When, if ever, will we learn than when the race to the bottom is finished, we’ll end up with a tax system with more holes in it than a block of Swiss cheese, and nothing to show for it?

When, if ever, will we learn that if these guys do end up in Montana, they’ll be demanding not just infrastructure, but police and fire protection and an educated work force and freedom from environmental regulation and subsidized air fares and even more tax cuts?

When, if ever, will we realize that we are dealing with people that are telling us, in so many words, that they are willing to do business in Montana only if they don’t have to pay the same taxes the rest of us poor schmucks do?

When, if ever, will we realize that good tax policy means defending the interests of all the people and businesses that are already here and committed to Montana, who get up every day, send their kids to school, go to work and pay their taxes without complaint and without looking for a handout?

* For those of you not familiar with Treasure State politics, Thomas is the Republican majority leader in the Montana Senate. 

Opportunity Knocks

On Monday, when we took up Sen. Jennifer Fielder’s bill creating a constitutional right to fish, hunt and trap, I had that familiar, sinking feeling that the Montana Senate had once again given up on logic for the day.*

The idea is lunatic enough as it is – after all, fishing, hunting and trapping are simply pastimes enjoyed by a minority of the population and in that sense no more worthy of constitutional protection than canoeing or skiing or drinking beer or crocheting or … well, you get the idea.  But then Sen. Fred Thomas doubled down on this foolishness by rising to his feet, voice trembling with righteous indignation, to insist that we had to pass this bill because our “rights are under attack.” I don’t know, but it seems to me that if the bill creates rights that we don’t currently have, it’s hard to see how they’re already under attack.** 

What Fielder and her pals were doing here was protecting their own interests by claiming a right that doesn’t really exist. They want access to public lands, resources and wildlife for their own benefit, and they resent the fact that, particularly in the case of trapping, there are other Montanans who dispute how those lands should be used and how that wildlife should be treated. What better way is there to prevail in that kind of dispute than to claim some imaginary right to do whatever you want, and attack your opponents for suppressing that right?

But Fielder was in something of a quandary when she proposed to create a right and in the same breath assert she already had it. She tried to get out of the mess by claiming that all she was doing was “clarifying” what the voters intended when they added the hunting and fishing provision to the Montana constitution in 2004. You can read that provision (Article IX,Section 7) for yourself, but since all it says is that the opportunity to harvest fish and game is to be forever preserved, you’ll probably be hard pressed to conclude that – oops! – what we really meant was that there’s a right to trap.

Sen. Jed Hinkle, by the way, made a big deal out of that opportunity language. Why, he claimed, we don’t even know what the term means. It can’t be found in a legal dictionary! So when we protected the opportunity to hunt and fish, Hinkle figures, we must have really meant the right to hunt and fish and trap. This linguistic legerdemain might have been a little more plausible if, in his closing comments, Hinkle hadn’t shot himself in the foot by noting that with this bill we had – wait for it – a “great opportunity” to define that most obscure of words: opportunity!

Fielder’s bill to amend the Constitution got out of the Senate with 30 votes aye (all Republican) and 20 votes no (18 Democrats and 2 Republicans).**  It takes the aye votes of 100 legislators to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot, so the bill needs 70 votes in the House to move forward, and that probably ain’t going to happen. But you might just give your representative a little nudge to make sure it doesn’t. Opportunity knocks.

*You can listen to the whole sorry debate here.

**Technically, the bill doesn’t actually create a right to fish, hunt and trap. Rather, it asks the voters to put that right into the Montana constitution.

***You can check out how your senator voted here.