Coastal Virginia State Rep Fails Again To Get State Into Cap & Trade, Because Money & Freedumb

For the second straight year, a Virginia Beach lawmaker has gone up against Virginia’s electric utilities and other powerful business interests with a plan to combat climate change and sea level rise. And once again, he has lost.

Republican Del. Ron Villanueva joined Democratic state Sen. Donald McEachin of Henrico County in a bipartisan effort to include Virginia in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative or a similar cap-and-trade program that forces utilities to pay for their carbon emissions, which are widely blamed for warming the planet.

The resulting revenue would have been used to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy generation and to fight sea level rise and recurrent flooding in Hampton Roads and other vulnerable parts of Virginia’s coastline.

Villanueva’s bill, HB351, breathed its last Tuesday in a Republican-controlled House of Delegates subcommittee, defeated on a 6-4 vote. Villanueva joined the panel’s three minority Democrats in the otherwise party-line vote. McEachin’s companion bill, SB571, was rejected on a straight party-line vote in a Senate committee last week.

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http://pilotonline.com/news/government/virginia/house-panel-kills-virginia-beach-delegate-s-proposal-to-combat/article_4c835a9c-a23d-55cc-9e84-5ad99132f774.html