Virginia governor-elect Glenn Youngkin is ready to pull the plug on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Speaking at the annual Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce meeting, the Republican said he was tired of the so-called carbon tax being passed on to Virginians. “Unfortunately it’s making the cost of living in Virginia, which has already been on a meteoric rise, even harder for Virginians to deal with,” Youngkin said in his keynote address. “So we are going to withdraw from it and no longer be part of it and allow Virginians to maintain that money.”

The RGGI was created in 2009 and adopted by 11 states to reduce and steadily decrease emissions from power plants. As part of the initiative, regulated plants must acquire an allowance for carbon dioxide fro the RGGI per every short ton of CO2 emitted. Those allowances are released quarterly and, in Virginia’s case, are made available through an auction. Profits from those sales are then invested in climate change mitigation and initiatives that provide energy-efficient solutions to communities. For all his complaining about costs coming down to taxpayers, Youngkin’s own office determined consumers would only save around $52 on their energy bills per year were the state to leave the RGGI.

Leaving the RGGI is not that simple, however. An executive order from Youngkin does not magically remove Virginia from the initiative. According to a fellow Republican, Lee Francis of the Virginia League of Conservation Voters, the State Air Pollution Control Board has the final say. “Youngkin’s proposal is grounded in neither fact or law,” Francis told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Put even more eloquently by a University of Virginia School of Law associate professor who spoke with the Washington Post, “leaving the trading program just seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face.” 

“You might leave this multistate trading program but still have to meet the zero-carbon mandate in the code,” Cale Jaffe told the Post. “I don’t know why you would relinquish a market that is helping to make the Clean Economy Act more affordable.” Hilariously, Youngkin post a link to the Washington Post article on Twitter in an attempt to double down on his short-sighted claims that the RGGI is a “bad deal for Virginians.” Looks like someone didn’t bother to read past the headline.

In addition to halving emissions across participating states, the RGGI provides necessary funding for disaster response as the climate continues to change. According to the Georgetown Climate Center, Virginia is “increasingly vulnerable to severe weather.” More than 100,000 people could experience flooding due to rising seas, while more than 400,000 homes are at risk of flooding due to storm surges. Youngkin insists the state can make it on its own without that extra funding or incentive to reduce emissions. But losing out on hundreds of millions of dollars from RGGI emissions allowances isn’t the way forward. If anything, Youngkin’s willingness to trash the environment for the cost of just one latte every month is a frightening preview of what’s to come if more Republicans are elected in 2022 and 2024.