Meaningful climate legislation lacking in Connecticut

By Shannon Laun The Connecticut Mirror

Connecticut’s General Assembly has officially gone home after failing to pass a single piece of significant climate legislation.

As Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) Commissioner Katie Dykes and several legislators pointed out in exasperation, the failure to act came as smoke from Canadian wildfires blanketed

Hartford and the rest of the region, a harbinger of things to come if we continue failing to curb emissions.

Despite repeated claims to be a national climate leader, Connecticut is falling further and further behind our more ambitious neighbors including New York, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts in passing meaningful climate legislation. After months of effort by concerned legislators and virtu- ally unanimous support from environmental advocates, bills that would strengthen the state’s climate law, shift new buildings and schools away from fossil fuel heating, and require a comprehensive roadmap to meet our climate goals all failed.

This is not the path we promised to take.

Fifteen years ago, Connecticut was a climate leader when the General Assembly first passed the Global Warming Solutions Act. This law currently requires Connecticut to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 45 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050. But Connecticut is not on track to meet either of these goals. Even worse, the state has pursued an accounting gimmick to cover up its lack of real progress.

Alarmingly, Connecticut only met its “ easy ” 2020 target (10 percent reduction from

1990 levels) by switching to a consumption-based methodology for the electric sector. Consumption-based accounting fails to include all the emissions from electricity generated in Connecticut that is exported to other states. But these emissions still exist and continue to harm the health of Connecticut communities. It’s deeply concerning that state leadership has chosen to obfuscate our lack of progress instead of taking meaningful action. There’s a real accountability problem here.

Unlike Connecticut officials, climate change isn’t just twiddling its thumbs; it’s affecting our health, our coastline, our pocketbooks, and our environment in deeply adverse ways as we speak. Warmer winters are contributing to increased flooding and causing tick-borne illnesses to run rampant. Sea levels are rising rapidly, with communities along Long Island Sound expected to lose two to seven feet of coastline in the next 80 years. Storms fueled by changing weather patterns have caused $443 million in damage since 2010. And our continued reliance on gas and diesel cars and trucks leads to poor air quality that shows no signs of improving.

We can’t just wait around for the General Assembly to act legislators don’t return until February and then only for an abbreviated session. What we can do right now is drive real progress on some crucial but slow-moving regulatory efforts at DEEP.

Shannon Laun is vice president of the Conservation Law Foundation. Read the complete commentary on the website of the Connecticut Mirror, ctmirror.org.

Look no further than the issue of public safety. Far too often, families and business owners in the 34th District have fallen victim to the rise in crime. Ongoing catalytic converter thefts are a prime example. We even saw a violent incident in Wallingford where the criminal fired gunshots.

As a member of the Public Safety and Security Committee, in 2022 I proposed balanced solutions, including increased penalties for criminals along with stricter regulations for auto parts dealers and metal recycling busi-