Shapiro breaks with Wolf over strategy on climate change

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HARRISBURG, Pa. - Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate for governor, is breaking with Gov. Tom Wolf on the centerpiece of Wolf’s plan to fight climate change amid the strong and sustained pushback it has received from building trades unions that have long backed the party's candidates for governor.

Wolf — a fellow Democrat who has endorsed Shapiro, the state's two-term attorney general — has worked for two years to finalize regulations to make Pennsylvania the first major fossil fuel state to adopt a carbon pricing policy by imposing a price on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

Wolf has called it a "historic, proactive and progressive approach that will have significant positive environmental, public health and economic impacts."

But Shapiro, in a statement from his campaign, suggested that Wolf's plan — which involves joining the multistate consortium, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI — does not satisfy criticism that it will hurt the state's energy industry, drive up electric prices and do little to curtail greenhouse gases.

"We need to take real action to address climate change, protect and create energy jobs and ensure Pennsylvania has reliable, affordable and clean power for the long term," Shapiro said in the statement. "As governor, I will implement an energy strategy which passes that test, and it’s not clear to me that RGGI does."