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Jacob Posik is a Young Voices contributor and the director of legislative affairs at Maine Policy Institute, a free-market think tank headquartered in Portland.
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.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Office, Maine emitted 14.4 million metric tons of carbon in 2021. That accounts for just 0.29 percent of all emissions in the United States, making Maine’s emissions the fifth lowest nationwide. Considering Maine’s forests absorb at least 60 percent of those emissions, our real share is likely even smaller.
Globally, more than 36 billion metric tons of carbon were emitted in the same year, meaning Maine is responsible for less than 0.04 percent of emissions worldwide.
These numbers help illustrate just how irrational it is to expect that decarbonization efforts in Maine will do anything to change the weather. In a state this large, rural, cold and relatively poor, expensive, far-reaching climate action is a recipe for policy failure.
Take, for example, the electric vehicle mandates under consideration by the Maine Board of Environmental Protection (BEP). Much like California’s plan to phase out gas-powered vehicles, these rules would require larger shares of new vehicle purchases to be electric starting in 2028, increasing each year until gas-powered vehicles are effectively banned.
The BEP was supposed to decide on this rule in December, but when storms took out the power lines, they had to reschedule. Yes, you read that correctly — the vote to mandate electric vehicles was delayed because too many Mainers didn’t have electricity. The BEP is tentatively scheduled to consider these rules on March 20.
Despite the state’s ambitious goal of having 219,000 registered EVs on the road by 2030, there are barely more than 9,000 registered today. While uptake of EVs has increased in recent years, the state has a long way to go and, apparently, not nearly enough willing consumers to get to its goal.
That’s because the average electric vehicle, even with the credits and subsidies available, is more expensive than the average gas-powered vehicle. When you consider the time wasted waiting for your car to charge while on the run and the cost of installing a charging station at home — if that’s even affordable for your family or feasible given your living arrangement — EVs are a headache most Mainers aren’t willing to endure.
Yet, powerful politicians like Mills and King continue to push for more aggressive climate policies that disrupt our daily lives, restrict our personal freedom to choose and steer low-income families toward endless poverty.
Whether it’s EV mandates, bans on natural gas expansion or offshore wind development, I’m certain Mainers simply can’t afford to cater to climate hysteria.
No amount of state-level regulations, mandates, prohibitions, government subsidies or investments can reverse or prevent the weather events that afflicted Maine in recent months.
Our first priority should be to protect energy options for all Maine families based on their needs. The state should recognize by now that nothing gets done when you can’t keep the lights on.