Legislative review of alarmist plan welcome

Louisiana’s Climate Initiatives Task Force and its product the Louisiana Climate Action Plan officially died early last year. But a review of its legacy is most appropriate.

In 2020, Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards, safely reelected, let his inner radical leftist surface in part by establishing the task force, which received orders to come up with a plan that mirrored the climate alarmism agenda. It duly did so by 2022, fatally flawed by the scientifically unsustainable assumptions behind it, that wanted to commit the state to a traumatic ratcheting down of carbon emissions.

Fortunately, for the most part the significant portions would require legislative or Public Service Commission acquiescence, and the climate realism majorities in both make that unlikely to happen. However, actions taken by the executive branch, for example, could adhere to minor aspects of the agenda at the expense of taxpayers.

Alternatively, some alarmist items could be implemented in policy, but for different political reasons. For example, the plan endorses carbon capture and sequestration as a means of removing carbon from the atmosphere – even though to scale up CCS to make any noticeable dent at all in carbon effluents would costs tens of trillions of dollars – but the real motivation for the proliferation of projects in the state to do so comes from lucrative federal subsidies, not from belief by legislative leaders or the Republican Gov. Jeff Landry Administration in alarmism but for economic development purposes fueled by government creating winners and losers.

As it is, both the task force and its product mercifully were put out of citizens’ miseries by R.S. 49:215 that essentially terminates JBE 2020-18. That law says that a previous governor’s executive orders expire shortly after he leaves office unless renewed by his successor. Still, zombie portions of the agenda could be living on with unknown consequences.

Enter GOP state Rep. Chuck Owen, whose HR 274 that passed the House empanels its Natural Resources and Environment Committee to get some answers. Owen, who understands that no scientifically validated evidence exists to prove that human activities cause significant change in climate, in his resolution commits the committee to review the plan.

This is overdue and welcome. Such a review can illuminate where state government, in law or in policy, acts to follow the plan and whether such actions convey any benefit to the state and its taxpayers. Publicizing these items, perhaps exposing practices few knew about, then invites legislative, executive, and public scrutiny as to whether these really serve the best interests of the state and its citizens.

It may have no impact on some or all of the zombie portions that stagger on depending upon policy-makers’ responses. But in demanding a defense of these this process can confirm for public consumption the actual worth of these items and which policy-makers will defend them – useful information for voters in future elections. By all means this exercise should commence.