Op-Ed: Climate Action Causes More Harm Than Good for Mainers
Following a flurry of devastating storms that led to widespread power outages and flooding in recent months, Maine politicians are posturing for more aggressive action on climate change. To me, their ideas aren’t any more likely to help the planet than they are to keep the lights on.
After a mid-January storm battered Maine, Gov. Janet Mills convened an emergency meeting of her Climate Council and followed it up by using her State of the State Address to call for $50 million in “community resilience” infrastructure investments.
U.S. Sen. Angus King has responded to Maine’s recent extreme weather events by saying “we are fiddling while the planet burns.”
I think state policymakers are fighting the wrong battle: If Maine could flip a switch and eliminate all its carbon emissions tomorrow, it would make no observable or quantifiable impact on local, regional or global climates. It would, however, cause measurable economic harm to the average Maine family.
This isn’t about whether climate change is real. It’s about whether Maine is legitimately equipped to do anything about it.
Click here to read Jacob Posik’s full op-ed in the Bangor Daily News.