Polluters weep for the old days

By PAUL MCMORROW

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Seven months ago at a Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) hearing, Gary Courts assailed caps on nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide. As the managing director for Dominion (the largest power plant owner in our region), he claimed that the regulations were "biased" against dirty plants, which he described as being "punished" by environmentalism. Last week, however, he was on his best behavior.

Calling the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multi-state compact Massachusetts recently signed on to, "historic," Courts praised greenhouse gas reduction efforts, saying, "Some have called the state's efforts a symbolic gesture because of the minute amount of CO2 gases that we could hope to reduce. But this small step is in fact one that the rest of the nation is watching very carefully." He also endorsed the idea of national pollution-reduction regimes.

Then, in his mildest, sweetest tone of voice, he tore away at the program's foundations.

Under RGGI, participants buy and sell pollution credits in a market-based system. RGGI caps emissions at 1990 levels and then sets initial emissions cuts of 5 percent every five years, with a target of an 80 percent reduction by 2050.

Courts asked that, instead of actually reducing emissions, polluters be allowed to pay into a mitigation fund. He also panned the "ability of speculators to come in and buy up and potentially hoard these much-needed [emissions] allowances." In most circles, such behavior is known as participating in an open market, and, since RGGI is a market-based regime, it's critical to providing economic incentives to polluting less.

Courts is, apparently, a fan of Willard Mitt Romney. After suddenly pulling out of RGGI (environmentalism is bad for vote-getting, you know), Romney modified Jane Swift's 2001 Filthy Five regulations, which capped pollutants at 1997-1999 levels; he allowed polluters who didn't want to reduce emissions to pay into a fund, and to seek emissions offsets anywhere in the world, not just in New England. Environmentalists widely criticized Romney's policies as being weak and ineffective, compared to RGGI.

Nevertheless, Courts asked DEP to "open up the geographic area from which we can procure greenhouse gas credits."

"After all," he argued, "a ton is a ton when it comes to CO2 reduction and sequestration. In the long term, under the planet-wide nature of climate change, Massachusetts residents benefit just as much from a CO2 ton sequestered or reduced in Kansas or Beijing as they do here in the Commonwealth." --PAUL MCMORROW