Testimony Before the Baltimore City Council Committee Hearing on Carbon Pricing Bill
Environmental Justice Organizers Call for More than a Market-Based Approach for Addressing Climate Crisis
“The concepts of carbon “neutrality” and “pricing” seek to solve the ecological disease of the climate crisis caused by the market-based model and every person/corporation for themselves mentality by giving the patient more of the poison that put them in critical condition to begin with. Instead of more of this bitter and ineffective medicine that puts an artificial price on corporations’ “right” to pollute and accelerate the climate crisis, we need to pivot away from the individualist toolkit to the collectivist toolkit of policy remedies needed to substantively address our collective crisis. If California cannot implement carbon pricing well, why should we think Baltimore would?
What does this mean practically? Let’s look to the policies cities are implementing that address the root causes of environmental racism and the climate crisis. Minneapolis has successfully implemented a cumulative environmental impact analysis that takes into account the climate impact of all public building. Cities in Washington state, New Jersey, and elsewhere are moving to ban new fossil fuel infrastructure. Instead of setting up an artificial market — which is not the wheelhouse of municipal government — use the environmental and zoning review processes already at the Council’s disposal to take direct action.
Listening to this hearing, I am struck by on the one hand a Councilman aspiring to “pick low hanging fruit” while the tree is dying, and, on the other hand, a Councilman with aspirations for systemic legislation without building — or maintaining, rather — the coalitions needed to bring systems change to fruition.
In conclusion, we all must do better, but those with power must do much, much better.” -Owen Silverman Andrews, rank and file member of Baltimore City Green Party
“21–0075R
Stephanie Compton
3211 Hamilton Ave.
Baltimore, MD 21214
Energy Justice Network
Written testimony in support of 21–0075R with amendments
We thank Councilman Conway for his leadership in addressing the threat of climate change and to make robust, transformative changes to core city systems.
While we are generally supportive of goals that aim to take climate action now, we’re wary of the definition of “carbon neutral.” The problem with “carbon neutrality by 2050” is that 2050 is too far off and it gives local polluters a free pass to continue polluting while questionably “offsetting” those emissions elsewhere in the globe, often with problematic and sketchy offset schemes. Carbon offsets are an accounting tool deployed to avoid making meaningful emissions reductions by the corporations most responsible for the climate crisis. The logic articulated by many proponents of a carbon tax goes something like this: with a tax, the costs of using fossil fuels might someday rise high enough to cause a shift toward renewable energy, which will outcompete fossil fuels; and anyway, even if a tax cannot achieve this, it will surely be better than nothing, or at least better than other market-based mechanisms like carbon trading, and we can put off addressing (or even thinking about) the real problems until later.
Climate Justice Alliance communities state that carbon trading and carbon offsets are fraudulent climate mitigation mechanisms that, in fact, help corporations and governments keep extracting and burning fossil fuels. Offsets, then, do not reduce emissions. In fact, they do not even compensate for emissions, as they are advertised to do, merely creating an illusion that something is being done about climate change. Instead, they allow emissions to increase and thus exacerbate global warming.
A 2016 Report stated that 75% of the credits issued were unlikely to represent real reductions, and that if countries had cut pollution on-site instead of relying on offsets, global carbon dioxide emissions would have been 600 million tons lower.
Further, as research on offset projects in the global South has demonstrated, they violate human rights of local communities and Indigenous Peoples and result in land grabs. The search for a business-friendly climate solution that would avoid the catastrophes of carbon trading has brought about a resurgence in the popularity of carbon tax schemes. Yet, increasing evidence shows that carbon taxes, like emissions trading schemes, fail to reduce emissions, much less address the root causes of global warming, and in addition place disproportionate burdens on those who are already oppressed under a heavily fossil-dependent regime.
Facing the climate emergency, we are at the time when we should be reducing emissions right now, today. The procrastinating carbon neutral approach is adding 3 times the emissions, with the sketchy offset schemes described above, that take no real action until closer to the due date of 2040, 2045 or even 2050.
One real solution to cut on-site pollution, locally, would be to end incineration and the Vicinity Energy downtown district heating system that is pouring pollutants into Baltimore’s air. Their steam loop provides steam heat by burning natural gas and using steam from Wheelabrator’s trash incinerator. Wheelabrator and Vicinity are responsible for a combined 48% of the city’s industrial GHG emissions.
Campaigns to remove subsidies from fossil fuel extraction and use are a more practical place to start in addressing climate change than campaigns to institute carbon taxes. Without public subsidies in the form of massive loans and incentives as well as, ultimately, the labor, land and livelihoods of the working class, people of color and impoverished communities, fossil fuel industries would not be viable and the question of carbon taxes would become moot.”
“I am expecting to see immediate and sustained actions by the city government, with specific examples being: close BRESCO, build a municipal-scale composting facility, convert the steam loop, discontinue methane hook-ups for new construction, and start a community choice energy program that provides union jobs to city residents to build out roof-top and brownfield solar at a scale that will make electricity for all city residents to have sustainable and very affordable electricity. Environmental harm and racism is a form of violence the city should be taking concrete actions to stop.” -Andrew Hinz
“[T]he term carbon neutral allows for using questionable ‘offsets’ in other places while continuing to pollute locally. These offsets have been shown to fail at actually reducing GHG emissions. Instead we need to shut down the BRESCO incinerator and stop burning our trash as one real measure to reduce our climate impact and improve air quality.” -Elad Firnberg
Carbon Neutral City Resolution Testimony
Stephen Leas
Thank you Committee Chair McCray and Members of the Committee,
My name is Stephen Leas and I am the political co-lead with Sunrise Movement Baltimore as well as a coordinator for Sunrise Movement Maryland. We are a youth-led movement fighting for a Green New Deal to create millions of jobs fighting the climate crisis while prioritizing frontline communities. I am testifying in favor of Global Warming Solutions – Carbon Neutral City, with amendments.
We thank Councilman Conway for his leadership in drafting this bill and we also thank the Mayor and the Office of Sustainability for their work with the sustainability plan.
Many of our youth members are terrified about the climate crisis that is already unfolding before our eyes. Fires ravage forests at alarming rates and destroy entire towns in California and Colorado, worsened by warming and droughts. Here on the east coast, flooding, recordbreaking storms and unsettling weather patterns are raising alarm bells. The risk of increasingly powerful hurricanes and superstorms grows each year. As we approach the third year of a taxing pandemic, we should remember that new infectious diseases will become more common as warming worsens. As permafrost thaws, there is even a risk of ancient diseases being released that we have no immunity to.
The implications are frightening. The climate crisis disproportionately impacts young people who will be forced to survive in a world in which the livable ecosystem has been irreparably harmed. Low income communities and people of color are disproportionately affected as well. In Baltimore, the heat island effect worsens the direct impact of warming on communities, as was recently discussed in last week’s hearing on green roofs. These are dangers we already see everyday having only experienced 1*C of warming. We are currently on track to reach 3*C or more of warming, the consequences of which are dire.
Unfortunately, action in line with science has been delayed, fallen upon deaf ears, and co opted by industries offering false solutions for profit. The recent movie “Don’t Look Up,” satirizes climate delay and the fact that we are risking our own extinction because businesses, governments, and the media minimize the threat. It’s immense popularity indicates that the public resonates with the message that we need climate action now, and that the usual excuses won’t work anymore.
We can still keep prevent warming below 1.5*C. While the climate crisis is the biggest existential threat of our time – it is also the biggest opportunity. In the Sunrise Movement, we are fighting for the Green New Deal, a sweeping federal resolution that outlines a rapid transition to reduce greenhouse gasses, asserting that it is vital to guarantee economic rights during a systemic transition, and that frontline communities left out of the original New Deal must be prioritized.
We can guarantee good union jobs in the green economy – in solar energy on rooftops, energy efficiency retrofits in low income communities to reduce buildings emissions & energy burden, in sustainable urban ag, in zero waste and the care economy. We can slash emissions by ending trash incineration, coal exports, and burning of natural gas, oil and gasoline. We can guarantee the right to housing and healthcare. We can empower communities through the green transition to have greater collaboration with the city, and democratic input into the economy. Baltimore can lead the way towards a truly green and just economy by passing the Carbon Neutral Cities Resolution.
We urge the council to vote for this bill and to adopt additional language that guarantees economic rights during the green transition such as healthcare, housing and the right to good union jobs. We also urge the council to adopt the J40 language the Biden administration is adopting, whereby 40% of benefits go toward frontline communities. We also support Blue Water Baltimore’s amendment to use net-zero language instead of carbon neutral language, so that all direct emissions that can be reduced are reduced. We also propose the council adopts language, either in this resolution or another vehicle, to plan a transition to true zero emissions. There is an alarming trend in some corners of the policy world to adopt questionable solutions that are not backed by science, such as carbon capture technology and an overreliance on carbon offsets. These are proposed by the fossil fuel industries most responsible for the problem and who have a history of holding real action hostage through misinformation campaigns & legalized bribery. Scaling down the fossil fuel industry and other polluting industries is what will work. We also urge the council to consider more ambitious interval targets. The Sustainability Plan identifies better targets, but consider that in Montgomery County, the official goal is 100% greenhouse gas reductions by 2035. If Baltimore and Montgomery County both set and achieve truly ambitious climate goals, our city and our state will be a leader on the world stage for climate action. All it takes is political will and a commitment to our future.
