The Daily Signal - Saving the Climate or Just Grabbing Cash? Gov. Spanberger Says the Quiet Part Out Loud | Bonner Cohen, Ph.D.

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

Virginia’s new Governor, Abigail Spanberger, openly admitted it’s good for the state to participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, not to protect the climate and environment, but rather because it’s a great “cash grab.”   Bonner Cohen, Ph.D., a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, explains how Virginia’s participation in RGGI will raise energy costs, hurt low- and middle-income residents, and drive businesses out of the state, when he joined Joe Thomas, The Daily Signal’s Virginia correspondent, on his podcast today.    “It’s not about saving the planet, and we have to be very careful about what we mean when we say it makes money for Virginia. Actually, it's ultimately going to cost Virginia rate payers who, as a result of RGGI, as well as a result of other energy policies she's imposing as well as taxes she plans to raise, these people are going to see their disposable incomes reduced and you have to ask the question: to what end?” Follow us on Instagram for EXCLUSIVE bonus content and the chance to be featured in our episodes: https://www.instagram.com/problematicwomen/   Connect with our hosts on socials!   Elise McCue X: https://x.com/intent/user?screen_name=EliseMcCue Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elisemccueofficial/   Virginia Allen: X: https://x.com/intent/user?screen_name=Virginia_Allen5 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/virginiaallenofficial/   Check out Top News in 10, hosted by The Daily Signal’s Tony Kinnett: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjMHBev3NsoUpc2Pzfk0n89cXWBqQltHY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thank you for sitting in with us on this sad occasion as all of the progress that has been made in Virginia over the past few years has started to backslide, but not even as slowly as your humble host, Maya Kulpa, could admit to joining us from the committee for a constructive tomorrow. Cfact.org is one of the great scientists in the battle against. this idea of man-made climate change. He is the great Bonner Cohen. Good morning, Bonner. How are you doing, sir? Good morning, Joe. I'm doing well, and I hope you are to, under the circumstances. Well, one of the things, and I take my victories where I can. Sometimes it's worth it just to hear them admitted in their own words. For years, you and I have talked about how Reggie isn't what Reggie pretends to be. That's the regional greenhouse gas. initiative and there was Abigail Spanberger before my unbelieving eyes Monday evening admitting to anyone

who was watching, I'm sure the dozens of people that were watching her live stream, that Reggie was just a great cash grab and it made so much money for Virginia and that's why we had to get back into the regional greenhouse gas initiative because it makes money for Virginia. You've been saying that all along. This isn't about saving the planet. Now, it's not about saving the planet, and we have to be very careful about what we mean when we say it makes money for Virginia. Actually, it's ultimately going to cost Virginia ratepayers who, as a result of Reggie, as well as as a result of other energy policies, she's imposing, as well as taxes she plans to raise, these people are going to see their disposable incomes reduced, and you have to ask the question to what end.

Reggie has been around for a couple of decades. It's a regional, as you part out, the Greenhouse Initiative, featuring states from actually where you would expect them to be. Regional, that region is the northeast and the mid-Atlantic. Virginia was the southernmost state. Governor Yonkin had a good judgment to get Virginia out of it, and Governor Spanberger is getting Virginia right back into it. And it's one of these phony scams that was cooked up within the context of the narrative of man-made global warming, later rebranded as climate change, said to be caused by the burning of fossil fuels. So what do as long as well as certain agricultural practices.

So what this aims to do on paper is to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases by forcing emitters of greenhouse gases who go beyond an arbitrarily set emission standard to then buy credits. And of course those credits, that's the cash that Governor Spanberger is referring to. Well, these carbon credits are nothing but a phony commodity. You can't put your hands on them. They don't accomplish anything. But they are one of the instruments dreamed up by people who saw the opportunity to virtue signal their commitment to the climate.

by putting up a scam that promises to put certain funds in the pockets of actually very few people at the expense of a great many people. I'm afraid, just thinking about it, it's California, here we come, because she's pointing Virginia in the self-same direction as California and other blue states have gone, namely staying loyal to the now thoroughly discredited climate narrative, one from which the United States, as well as many states within the U.S., and not to mention even Europe slowly but surely, are moving away from simply because they have seen that the policies being adopted to this under the guise of decarbonization.

well decarbonization means deindustrialization. And it's going to make Virginia increasingly dependent upon ready, wind, and solar, both of which are intermittent, extremely expensive, unreliable. And that is the direction in which she is taking the state. And this is, again, it's going to benefit a small group of people, but it will by no means provide aid and comfort to Virginia's long-suffering ratepayers who are about to pay a lot more to heat their homes and weather and cool them in summer as a result of the steps that she is taking.

Well, and I'm curious about that. Bonner Cohen is on with us from the Committee for a constructive tomorrow, CFAC.org, and he's been digging into this climate science. How long now, Bonner, have you been? More than I care to think. Actually, over 30, 35 years. My gosh. The sad thing about it is the whole narrative is collapsing. And yet Spomberger is going headlong, taking Virginia into the dead end of dependence on renewable energy.

Believe me, Virginia ratepayers, as well as Virginia businesses. what have you, are going to pay dearly for this. Well, she brought that up during her Monday speech to the General Assembly. She demagogued and took a couple of pot shots at Dominion Energy for continued increases in rates. But it is appeared to me that a lot of that has been born out of dealing with regulations that Dominion had to deal with. And I'm not taking their side in this. I think there is a certain amount of their willing.

co-conspirator in this because they know that there's going to be a cash flow situation. So they're not necessarily the victims here. But I don't think that they're the reason Virginia Rapears are paying more. What do you say to that, Bonner? Right. Dominion Energy is, shall we say, a co-conspirative in this. See their offshore wind farm, which is a gigantic waste and one of the most stupid ways to produce electricity. imaginable, nevertheless, to blame the utility for the policies that she is putting into place,

the very predictable consequences of which will be a diminution of people's disposable income throughout Virginia is just casting the blame on someone else, perhaps not an entirely innocent party in the case of Dominion, but it is her policies that will drive up the cost of energy for all Virginians, which coupled with the taxes that she wants to raise across the board are going to quickly turn Virginia into a California wannabe. So what about the businesses during the four years of the Yonkin administration, despite the headwinds of a Democrat-controlled House and Senate, they were able to make some big headwinds with big companies promising to build new.

facilities in the pharmaceutical industry and the light manufacturing industry, never mind our data industry. And one of the things, and let me stick a pin into the whole data industry thing because I think you and I have taught in the past about how Governor Northam got us into this whole scam. And even at that point, 45 or so percent of the world's internet traffic was already coming through Virginia. But before we get into that, what about all these businesses that have? really, I mean, the way they've had their ceremonial ground-breakings, but they haven't

necessarily put their facilities up yet. Are we looking at a flight of businesses that had committed to Virginia that are now heading for the hills or thinking, you know, Wednesday? Yeah, that's a good question to raise, because some of these companies may be having second thoughts. Do they really want to put their eggs in the Virginia basket, knowing full well that doing business in Virginia, that is manufacturing whatever it is that they want to manufacture here, is going to wind up costing them a lot more than they thought when they originally made their commitment. So don't be surprised if companies think, well, you know, we could put this thing in Tennessee, or we could put it in Georgia or Texas or some other place, Oklahoma, North Dakota, you name it.

or for that matter, and be very careful about this, West Virginia, which may turn out to be the ultimate escape hatch for a lot of people, because they are not, it's right next door, and they are not imposing the policies there that Governor Spanberger is imposing here. So, yes, I think there is considerable reason to believe that businesses, and they have made huge commitments here, very, very important. under Governor Youngton. Don't be surprised if they have second thoughts and decide to take their considerable business elsewhere. And then at some point, then it's all going to come back down to whoever in Virginia has the money to pay the taxes that are going to have to be recouped into this because you've laid out the mathematics on this regional greenhouse gas initiative, Bonner Cohen on with us from the committee for a constructive tomorrow, CFAC.org. that, you know, as it goes through its timeline, the bell curve of who has to pick up the cost is going to come harder and harder on the poorest among us, which is going to lead, I believe, having watched these people long enough to hire taxes on those who generate some wealth or have some wealth. We'll see it in the form of estate taxes and things like that in an effort to get the money to see. subsidize the poorest of us and it'll just become a cycle and people will start leaving and it'll be

New York City, never mind California. Right. These policies, what they all have in common among that along with being part of a completely phony narrative, which is nothing but a hoax, but they are regressive. Those with higher incomes, the high rollers who live not too far from where I am here in Arlington, Virginia, who live in enclaves like McLean and what have you, they will be able to handle this. But I'm thinking about people of middle and lower income, how are they going to be able to make due when the necessities of life, of which electricity is one of the most, important or going to become more expensive. Well, the elites and Governor Sponberger is nothing, if not a member of the elites, just look at her biography. She doesn't care about that. And she's very much in line with so many other people of her ilk in that they look down upon ordinary working people. They don't really care about them.

They will say we need to deal with certain inequities here, there, and yonder. But actually what they're doing is they're not only perpetuating those inequities. They're deepening them simply by taking money out of their hands and putting that money, taking money out of the hands of people who don't, many of whom don't have that much to give up anyway. At some point, putting that money into the hands of high rollers. Well, and that's it because these corporations that are, cozing up to the regional greenhouse gas emissions bonder. You talked about the cap and trade scheme, which is carbon credits. Okay, we don't burn so much. So we, you know, make money. We make credits

because we don't burn so much carbon. And therefore, we can sell these on the open market to companies that do burn more. We remember Barack Obama explaining to us that they were going to start an actual stock exchange for these kind of credits back in his administration and conveniently based in Chicago as part of the mercantile exchange there. But, you know, those credits don't do anything towards fixing the economy. Now, you talked about the ecology, I mean, you talked about how people in Europe are starting to see the fruit of this. They've been at a few more years than Virginia has. So where are the Germans, the French, the Greeks,

those European Union countries that bought into this back when Al Gore was still touring the world on his get off the iceberg tour? They're in deep trouble. Deindustrialization has spread rapidly throughout Europe, specifically Germany, Britain, a little less so with France, because it has a nuclear power.

And elsewhere in Europe, as a result of Europe's embrace of the very policies that Governor Spanberger is embracing now. Britain from Scotland all the way down to the English Channel and Germany from the Danish border all the way down to the Swiss border is chock full of wind turbines and solar panels. I can't help me be amused by the... by the latter having lived in Europe for a long time, it's cloudy there an awful lot. You're not going to get that much of sun there. Think of sun and Scotland. No, no. But anyway, the upshot of all of that is their electricity

prices have gone through the roof. What have been the consequences of that? The once mighty German automobile industry is now facing serious challenges, particularly from the Chinese, who can produce electric vehicles, which is also part of the whole scheme that they want to impose on the rest of us. There's no way in the world the Germans can produce their cars as cheaply as a Chinese can do. And the German automobile industry is in a great deal of trouble. There has been a gradual belated awakening on this. They now realize what they've gotten themselves into. It's almost given the political divisions within all of those European countries on this, it's almost impossible to turn that around. And it is very revealing that neither Governor

Spanberger nor for that matter anybody else who's embracing this sort of thing. Think of Governor Pritzker in Illinois, Governor Newsom in California, Mayor Bandami in New York, you know, the list of of Blue State politicians, they've learned absolutely nothing from something that is playing out right in front of them. You can only draw the conclusion this is willful ignorance on their part, and it's a sign of their loyalty to a certain agenda as opposed to their concern about those whom they pretend to represent. We were talking about the data center industry in Virginia, booming 70% of the,

of the internet traffic on the planet goes through the Commonwealth of Virginia at one data center or another and Governor Spanberger Monday also demagogued that as part of the EVille that is driving up people's electric rates

but when Governor Northam signed us into the regional greenhouse gas initiative it was already at a level where at least 40% I'm told of the internet traffic on the planet was already going through Virginia data centers when they signed into this. So they knew that these data centers were going to be a big part of Virginia's economy,

yet they signed us into this, you called it an economic suicide pack, once to me, Bonner. Is it willful ignorance, or are they being paid off by somebody who's making money whether Virginians are able to make ends meet or not? I think it's both. If you look at some of the other things, the Governor Spanberger said, she wants to make Virginia increasingly a welcoming place for wind and solar. Now, if you look at the data centers that are being proposed for Virginia,

the last thing those developers want is to be dependent on wind and solar for their energy simply because they can't get the electricity that they need for to power the data centers from intermittent wind and solar so that you know that is never going to happen so data centers ultimately whether they were in Virginia or Arizona or any place else they're going to have to become energy self-sufficient. That is the electricity to power them is going to have to be generated on site. It can't be taken away from the grid. And that is something that the Trump administration is now pushing by, among other things, instructing developers of data centers. Look, you've got to start

paying for natural gas plants and nuclear plants so that you can supply the electricity you need for your data centers. These have to be arrangements that do not come at the detriment of surrounding communities. Now, last question for you, Bonner-Cohen, Cefack.org, the committee for a constructive tomorrow. Governor Yonkin, you talked about these data centers. We have the program to build both the small nuclear reactors, aka the ones we've been putting and submarines since the 50s and 60s.

But also we're pioneering. I talked to the fellows from Siemens and the Commonwealth fusion development. We're working on that as well. How much do you expect of Governor Junkin's all of the above approach to energy generation is going to go out the window under Governor Spanberger now? I think an awful lot of it will. the one possibility is the data centers, the ones, both the ones that are already operating as well as the ones that are more or less in the pipeline to come to Virginia, I think they know now that the political winds to a certain extent are blowing in their face with respect to energy, that they're going to have to come up with it on their own. So I think the data center developers themselves, and you know, these are deep pocketed Silicon Valley. operations politically very savvy, they will find a way to get things done through, as you said,

small modular reactors or other sources of energy. You do wonder, however, whether the Silicon Valley people, as well as other developers, getting back to something we talked about earlier, they may have second thoughts now about Virginia. After all, if the grass is greener next door in West Virginia or often Oklahoma or wherever, believe me, a lot of them are going to say this is not worth it. Why do business in a state that makes it difficult to do business? Let's go elsewhere. Bonner, thank you so much for your time. Very gracious to join us this day, the Daily Signal podcast and Joe Thomas here in the morning with you.

It's the committee for a construction. tomorrow.cifact.org and Bonner, God bless you, sir, and you have a... Okay, thank you, Joe. And join it as always.