From today's NYTimes (9 States ...), the states put more pressure on the feds to do something serious about climate change and domestic air quality:
Officials in New York and eight other Northeastern states have come to a preliminary agreement to freeze power plant emissions at their current levels and then reduce them by 10 percent by 2020, according to a confidential draft proposal.
Wow, that sounds big.
Read on for more pithy comments!
More:
The cooperative action, the first of its kind in the nation, came after the Bush administration decided not to regulate the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Once a final agreement is reached, the legislatures of the nine states will have to enact it, which is considered likely.
Why can't the current administration do something about these rogue states?
More:
Enforcement of emission controls could potentially result in higher energy prices in the nine states, which officials hope can be offset by subsidies and support for the development of new technology that would be paid for with the proceeds from the sale of emission allowances to the utility companies.
What is so wrong about high energy prices (ignoring the equity aspects, poor people pay a larger portion of the incomes to the utility companies), high prices will reduce energy consumption. Isn't that what we want? (OK, I need to define "we").
[The above quote is a terribly written sentence. I've read it 3+ times and I don't fully understand what is supposed to happen. Let's see, NE utilities buy emissions allowances (and get to produce/pollute more), the allowance revenue is then used to subsidize the utilities who then produce/pollute more? I'm getting suspicious about this plan.]
More:
The regional initiative would set up a market-driven system to control emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, from more than 600 electric generators in the nine states. Environmentalists who support a federal law to control greenhouse gases believe that the model established by the Northeastern states will be followed by other states, resulting in pressure that could eventually lead to the enactment of a national law.
Define "eventually."
More:
California, Washington and Oregon are in the early stages of exploring a regional agreement similar to the Northeastern plan. The nine states in the Northeastern agreement are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. They were brought together in 2003 by a Republican governor, George E. Pataki of New York, who broke sharply and openly with the Bush administration over the handling of greenhouse gases and Washington's refusal to join more than 150 countries in signing the Kyoto Protocols, the agreement to reduce emissions that went into effect earlier this year.
President Bush is mad at Governor Pataki. And he should be! Sarc.
And skipping a few paragraphs, here is the money quote:
In a statement, James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, tried to put the states' initiative in a positive light. "We welcome all efforts to help meet the president's goal for significantly reducing greenhouse gas intensity by investing in new, more efficient technologies," he said.
The White House Council on Environmental Quality sees this as a negative.
And finally:
However, some environmentalists are disappointed with the draft plan. They argue that much deeper cuts were achievable.
No good news is good news.
