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May 2, 2024

CT House Democrats vote to declare ‘climate crisis’

MARK PAZNIOKAS / CTMIRROR.ORG Rep. Christine Palm, center, poses with environmental advocates after the vote.
By Mark Pazniokas, CT Mirror

Connecticut would declare a climate crisis and outline steps to sharply reduce greenhouse gases by 2050 under a bill the House passed Wednesday after a debate reflecting the deep divide among Democrats and Republicans on the science, economics and politics of climate.

House Bill 5004, an election-year priority of the House Democratic majority, passed on an 94-56 vote after a one-sided debate in which some Republicans tried and failed to draw Democrats into an argument over whether fossil fuels are to blame for a warming planet.

“Whether climate change is real is not a debate,” said Rep. Christine Palm, D-Chester, the primary sponsor of the bill and vice chair of the Environment Committee, explaining her refusal to engage Republicans who called the warming global temperatures a natural phenomenon. 

Passage comes at a time when Connecticut is losing ground on its greenhouse gas reduction goals and the environmental movement is struggling to reassure allies that its clean-air agenda is good politics. The bill is less ambitious than a climate proposal last year, focusing on incentives, not mandates.

The declaration of a crisis would carry no legal authority, as opposed to an emergency declaration that would empower the governor to take unilateral action. But it reinforces that official policy in Connecticut is moving away from fossil fuels without mandating a specific replacement.

The bill would set greenhouse gas emissions standards for state agencies and align the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act with neighboring states. Earlier plans to allow for citizen suits to force compliance were scrapped, and a provision setting a goal for installing 310,000 heat pumps was weakened to a mandate for the state to develop a plan to promote them. 

Still, environmental advocates celebrated with Palm after passage, posing for a group photo and happy to take a win they hope will help them regain momentum after disappointing sessions. A week ago, the state released its annual inventory of greenhouse gases, showing little progress.

“We’re already feeling the effects of climate change and simply can’t afford another year without major action. To get back on track, we need policies that will deliver deep cuts to emissions and hold the state’s feet to the fire on maintaining those cuts long-term,” said Charles Rothenberger, a lobbyist at Save the Sound.

Chris Phelps of Environmental Connecticut called the bill “a down-payment on the action Connecticut must take to do its part to eliminate the pollution that is fueling climate change.”

Republicans lined up against the bill, variously finding fault in specific provisions or attacking the need for any state action, questioning whether climate change was real, whether increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are harmful, or if a small state was capable of mitigating it.

No Republican voted for the measure. Four Democrats were opposed: Reps. Jill Barry of Glastonbury, Michelle Cook of Torrington, Michael DiGiovancarlo of Waterbury and Chris Poulos of Southington.

The vote in the House roughly mirrored what Pew Research found last summer about the electorate: Nearly 80% of Democrats see climate change as a major threat to the nation’s well-being, up from 58% a decade ago; only 25% of Republicans agree, a number little changed over the same period.

By happenstance or design, Republican opposition to the climate bill echoed positions taken by Donald J. Trump in his presidential campaign, a rarity in a General Assembly where most Republicans seem to prefer keeping a distance from their presumptive presidential nominee.

“It’s not a good tactic in Connecticut,” said House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford.  “There are very few social issues that I think Connecticut Republicans are aligned with national Republicans. I think it’s a mistake. If you don’t like portions of the bill, say that.”

They did both.

Rep. John Piscopo, R-Thompson, faulted a provision that says “state agencies shall have the goal of only utilizing zero-carbon generating electricity by 2030.” Without getting a firm answer, he asked how even the state Capitol could be heated and cooled without fossil fuels in just six years.

More broadly, Piscopo and other Republicans asserted that the scientific consensus that fossil fuels are driving climate change is premature.

“Carbon dioxide is not a poison,” Piscopo said. “Actually, carbon dioxide is plant food.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration acknowledges that a certain level of carbon dioxide is necessary to create a greenhouse effect that keeps the planet from freezing, but the levels are climbing rapidly.

NOAA’s global monitoring lab has concluded the “global average atmospheric carbon dioxide was 419.3 parts per million in 2023, setting a new record high. The increase between 2022 and 2023 was 2.8 ppm — the 12th year in a row where the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased by more than 2 ppm.”

More alarming was the longer trend.

“The annual rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 60 years is about 100 times faster than previous natural increases, such as those that occurred at the end of the last ice age 11,000-17,000 years ago,” NOAA says.

Republicans questioned the practicality of moving away from fossil fuels, albeit without the glee Trump has expressed in his intention to reverse every climate and clean-air initiative created by President Joe Biden, much as Trump did negating Obama administration policies in his first term.

Rep. Doug Dubitsky, R-Chaplin, said the Democrats’ goal was to eventually put every gas station out of business.

“All the gas stations in the state will have to close. You want to go to the gas station in your town…and go tell the owner. ‘Sorry, dude, you got to close to save the planet.’ I don’t want to have that conversation,” Dubitsky said.

Dubitsky and others complained Democrats want to force a transition to electric vehicles that carry their own environmental impacts, including a reliance on batteries that require cobalt mined under horrific conditions in Africa.

To underscore the point, the Republicans offered an amendment that would require any EV battery sold in Connecticut be certified as having “net-zero carbon emissions” and contained no materials “sourced from operations using child labor.”

It failed on a party-line vote after Palm quoted a UNICEF report concluding that children are bearing the brunt of climate change.

House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford, offered no criticism after the debate of Republicans who insisted climate change was no threat but said it was not the major thrust behind the GOP’s opposition.

“Our concern is really about the affordability piece: How much is this going to cost residents, and what is going to be the rate of return?” Candelora said.

Neither Candelora nor House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, gave the closing remarks generally expected from caucus leaders of bills that so sharply divide the parties.

The last words went to Palm and Rep. Patrick Callahan, R-New Fairfield, the ranking Republican on the Environment Committee.

Callahan had argued earlier that carbon levels are unconcerning, but his closing shot was that the Democratic goals were impractical. Democrats are encouraging a shift to heating and cooling with heat pumps and driving EVs instead of gas-powered vehicles, which would stress an electric grid that has limited capacity, he said.

“The bottom line is that we need natural gas, we need fossil fuels,” Callahan said. “And electrifying the grid will be a massive demand increase, and we’re going to need a lot of work to the grid that’s gonna get charged back to the ratepayers.”

Palm, who is not seeking reelection this fall, said the bill and its targets are aspirational, necessary to make changes to save the planet and encourage a new generation of activists.

“I urge all of my colleagues to vote for this bill, which is a vote for our children, for other people’s children, for the children yet to be born on this Earth of which we are merely the stewards,” Palm said.

CT Mirror staff writer Jan Ellen Spiegel contributed to this report.

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