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For sale: pollution
Abrahm Lustgarten, FORTUNE Magazine
As climate worries heat up, U.S. firms are experimenting with the greenhouse gas trade. Is this a good idea?
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…Like it or not, U.S. industry is beginning to accept that the issue of climate change is not going away. Many companies, including AEP, believe that a cap-and-trade setup is the most economical way for business to deal with it.
Trading pollution rights on a virtual commodity exchange is not the stuff of mad green wonks. The United States already runs several environmental markets, including the highly successful SO2 framework to combat acid rain, and Europe and Canada also have carbon markets. (The CCX has subsidiary exchanges that operate in both those places.)
Though no one has to join, the CCX has managed to attract a broad array of members, including industrial giants like Rolls-Royce (Charts), Motorola (Charts), DuPont (Charts), and IBM (Charts); six cities; and even a U.S. Senator, Richard Lugar (R-Indiana), who owns a 600-acre farm. It’s difficult to know exactly what percentage of U.S. emissions CCX members account for – on this and other details, the operations can be murky – but AEP alone accounts for about 10 percent of the nation’s stationary source (i.e., not cars) emissions. Most members have pledged to reduce their baseline emissions by 1 percent a year.
…But fundamental questions remain: Can a voluntary system that includes only a small fraction of polluters ever result in robust trading? Is the CCX really helping the environment, or just adding pages to sustainability reports? And since companies can make efficiency gains on their own, why do they need the CCX at all?
(24 Aug 2006)
Finally, Fired up over Global Warming
Bill McKibben, Boston Globe
You’ve seen or heard of Al Gore’s movie. The pictures of Hurricane Katrina remain in the back of your mind. You’ve sweated through this record summer. You sense — with just a bit of panic — that there’s really no problem more important in the long run than global warming. So what do you do?
Change your light bulbs — check.
Think about a new hybrid Prius — check.
Go organize a demonstration — well, maybe.
The movement to tackle climate change is finally growing large in this country, and at least part of it is beginning to get a little more outspoken. In late spring, three activists locked themselves in Senator Max Baucus’s Montana office when he refused to answer questions they had submitted about his stand on climate legislation. Later this month, protesters are expected to descend upon the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Maryland to demand the resignations of the nation’s chief hurricane forecasters, arguing that they have downplayed the threat from climate change. And over Labor Day weekend, thousands of Vermonters are expected to walk part or all of a five-day, cross-state trek from Robert Frost’s old cabin in Ripton to the Federal Building in Burlington to demand that the state’s candidates for national office pledge to support the strongest possible legislation to slow US carbon emissions.
These are among the first even slightly militant responses to global warming by average Americans, but I doubt they’ll be the last.
(24 Aug 2006)
Also at Common Dreams
New Report: 6 Steps to Beating Global Warming
press release, PennEnvironment
…a new report released today by PennEnvironment outlined how the country can achieve the pollution reductions necessary to avoid the worst consequences of global warming. The report found that we can reduce our global warming emissions nationally by nearly 20 percent within the next 15 years through six policies that focus on boosting energy efficiency and renewable energy.
(24 Aug 2006)
Rising to the Challenge: Six Steps to Cut Global Warming Pollution in the United States (51-page PDF).
Summary of report.
Colorado joins effort to fight global warming
Daniel J. ChacC3n, Rocky Mountain News
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Colorado is joining a growing number of states and cities that have taken it upon themselves to fight global warming locally.
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and others on Thursday kicked off efforts to develop a statewide plan to reduce emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming.
The initiative puts Colorado in step with dozens of state and local governments across the country – from small towns such as Aspen to the entire state of California – that are tackling concerns about climate change on their own, in many cases because they complain that the federal government hasn’t shown leadership on the issue.
The Colorado Climate Project will try to reduce the state’s contributions and vulnerability to climate change, said Stephen Saunders, president of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization.
In 2000, based on carbon dioxide emissions, which are responsible for about 80 percent of all so-called greenhouse gas emissions, Colorado was the 39th largest polluter in the world if U.S. states were included in a comparison to countries.
“We have a lot at stake, and what we do here matters,” Saunders said.
(25 Aug 2006)
According to Stuart Staniford, Denver mayor Hickenlooper is a member of “that brave but small band of honest and courageous politicians willing to go anywhere near the issue of peak oil.”. (Report on the ASPO-USA 2005 conference). -BA
California poised to act on its own on global warming
USA Today
SAN FRANCISCO – California has led the nation on many environmental issues: clean air, energy efficiency, recycling, alternative fuels. Now the Golden State is poised to grab the initiative on one mostly ignored in Washington: global warming.
Two bills nearing passage in the California Legislature would authorize the USA’s broadest crackdown on greenhouse gases, considered by most scientists the cause of Earth’s warming.
One bill would create the first mandatory caps, requiring companies to cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and eliminate an estimated 190 million tons of greenhouse gases. California produces more greenhouse gases than all but 11 countries, according to the California Environmental Protection Agency.
The other bill would bar California utilities from buying electricity from out-of-state power plants that generate large quantities of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas. That would force more than two dozen coal-fired plants under development in the West to adopt non-polluting technologies or lose a piece of the California market.
“This is the most progressive thing to come down the pike,” says Deborah Sivas, director of Stanford University’s environmental law clinic. “We’re very likely to see other states follow suit.”
Two years ago, California regulators approved strict rules to curb motor vehicle emissions. Those rules, requiring 30% emissions cuts by 2016, are being challenged in federal court by auto companies and the Bush administration.
Ten other states have adopted the vehicle standards, and most are likely to join California in sidestepping the federal government to clamp down on sources other than vehicles.
“The objective is bottom-up pressure on the Bush administration,” says Fabian Nunez, speaker of the California Assembly and a sponsor of the cap bill. “The United States hasn’t come around. We’re Johnny-come-latelies here.”
(24 Aug 2006)
Related: Calif. Sen. Feinstein unveils her plan to cut greenhouse gas (SF Chronicle).
