TCI Regional Policy Design Stakeholder Submissions

With the effects of Climate change becoming more pronounced, it has become a "now or never" time to “…design a regional low-carbon transportation policy proposal that would cap and reduce carbon emissions from the combustion of transportation fuels through a cap-and-invest program or other pricing mechanism… [and]… to complete the policy development process within one year, after which each jurisdiction will decide whether to adopt and implement the policy” as proposed by Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI) states.
OUR SURVIVAL ON THIS PLANET REQUIRES SUCH ACTION!

Mass transportation will help reduce congestion in many areas and reduce our carbon emissions. Infrastructure design, construction and maintenance will also provide jobs that will help our economy.

We need to stop the folly of additional lanes of traffic on interstates. We need a high-speed rail system to connect all the major cities on the East Coast, at least Boston to Richmond. No more highways--we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over when a metro area develops. I am seeing it explode before my eyes here in Richmond.

My name is Robert Orgera, I am an architect and environmentalist also a member of my towns Environmental Commission.
As an architect/planner I am well trained in understanding the real impact to local environments coastal, urban. Suburban and rural caused by bad land use planning and ignorance of climate change. I fully endorse this regional initiative and any similar measures considered to reduce carbon emissions.

We are custodians of this planet. We owe it to our children to minimize the harm done... and by the way, create interesting jobs.

I taught environmental systems science to high school students for thirty years, with an emphasis on climate change. It is thus no accident that young people like Greta Thunberg are leading the public outcry regarding the impacts of rising temperature. They come prepared with a scientific literacy that includes an understanding of how interconnected are the world’s natural life-support systems that are balanced by means of negative feedback. Now unbalanced, the feedback is turning positive. For instance, heat means more forest fires, which dries out more trees, which burn more easily, which releases more carbon, which pushes global temperatures higher, which melts more ice, which exposes more of the Earth to sunlight, which warms the poles, which lowers the temperature gradient with the equator, which slows ocean currents and weather systems, which results in more extreme storms and longer droughts. It is also now clear that positive climate feedbacks are not limited to physics, but stretch to economics, politics and psychology. The Amazon, for instance, is turning into a savannah because the loss of forest is weakening rainfall, which makes harvests lower, which gives farmers an economic motivation to clear more land to make up for lost production, which means more fires and less rain. Fluid circulations that were locked into regular forms have started to “wobble,” like a toy top wobbling wildly as it slows. The result, for example, includes cold air spilling south in polar vortexes and disruptions of the normal patterns of deep-water currents distributing heat from hot to cold.

I am encouraged by your initiative to decongest greenhouse gas-emitting traffic corridors through a cooperative, bipartisan effort of state governorships like the one that tackled the pollution of the Great Lakes. You have my complete support for which I’m willing to pay with my tax dollars.

Bravo to the bi-partisan group of governors who have crafted this initiative! This bill will enable our states to have billions of dollars in funding to improve transportation, reduce traffic, improve public health by reducing air pollution, and hundreds of millions in avoided climate-related costs. Thank you for your leadership.

As a parent of a teenage son I care about reducing pollution from transportation, which is the largest source of global warming emissions so that he and his children can live in a healthy and sustainable environment.

I request that the State of New York formally join the plan to reduce emissions.

I support a policy that has a strong component of equity by prioritizing clean investments in areas overburdened by pollution and/or for those who don't have access.

I am appreciative for the bipartisan nature of this project, moving us forward while the federal government takes us backward.

Thank you.