Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliff said Tuesday the state will begin implementing hefty environmental regulations against the fossil fuel industry.
He told reporters that Virginia “cannot afford to sit idly by” as President Donald Trump rolls back his predecessor’s efforts to battle climate change. The governor directed his administration to create rules to “abate, control, or limit” carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
Moving to enact the regulations, McAuliffe said, will help the state rebut some of the damage he thinks Trump caused with his climate rollback.
“Unfortunately the news out of this White House is alarming,” he said. “The citizens of our commonwealth want and expect us to confront this issue.”
Several states in the governor’s region have collaborated to create the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade program seeking to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent from 2005 levels. California has enacted a similar policy.
McAuliffe has hinted at a 2020 presidential campaign and announced the state’s new environmental position before he was set to talk at a Washington conference featuring other Democratic presidential hopefuls.
Republicans lambasted the Democrat’s announcement.
“The governor is attempting to implement a failed national policy in the Commonwealth that will further hamper economic growth,” House Speaker William J. Howell said.
McAuliffe joins his California counterpart, Jerry Brown, in using their state as a political tool against the president’s climate policies.
Brown is positioning California as the anti-Trump state. The Golden State voted for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by a wide margin during the 2016 presidential election,
His strategy could backfire, though, if California continues to beef up its environmental regulations while Trump decreases regulations on every other state, according to Rob Lapsley, the president of one of California’s largest business advocacy groups.
“If the other states pursue no-climate-change policies, and we continue to go it on our own without climate policies, then we would be at a competitive disadvantage for either relocating companies or growing companies here particularly manufacturing factories,” Lapsley said.
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