Jessica Hammons
Staff Writer
As of last Tuesday, seven states and four Canadian provinces got a bit greener.
In Feb. 2007, Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington, as well as the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, formed the Western Climate Initiative — an organization focused on reducing regional greenhouse gas emissions.
On Tuesday, the seven governors and four provincial premiers comprising the Western Climate Initiate unveiled a 122-page document outlining the strategy for their plan aimed at slashing regional greenhouse pollutants to 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.
The Western Climate Initiative is a cap-and-trade-style program based on European models. It allows companies to buy and barter credits for their emissions. Simply put, businesses that cannot reduce their emissions enough would have to buy credits that would allow them to produce their current amounts of carbon dioxide.
The plan would allow for industries to use offsets to subsidize up to 49 percent of the emissions they are required to cut. These offsets include planting trees and capturing landfill emissions, which many say could be cheaper than installing expensive equipment to cut fossil fuel burning or switching to cleaner power.
Some say the current plan has a loophole that would encourage outsourcing to avoid paying for expensive modifications. This would decrease the company’s carbon emission.
The simple fact of the matter is that it takes green to make green, and some companies are not willing to change their current practices, thus undermining the initiative’s long-term climate goals.
To distribute the majority of these greenhouse emission credits, California is looking to auction them off. The state then plans to use the money, in part, to promote sustainable and efficient energy sources, such as solar and wind power.
The idea of a regional cleanup may seem pointless to some, due to the fact that smog and carbon dioxide have no concept of state borders. But, the message is bigger than 11 states and provinces trying to make a cleaner region — they are trying to make a cleaner world.
They are sending a message to Ottawa and Washington, saying that if the federal government doesn’t want to take the initiative to tackle the matter, the regional governments will.
“We’re sending a strong message to our federal governments that states and provinces are moving forward in the absence of federal action,” according to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, “and we’re setting the stage for national programs that are just as aggressive.”
So far, it seems this ideology is working. Both presidential candidates, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain, have some form of national cap-and-trade program in their platforms. Even now, many businesses and utilities say it’s not a matter of “if,” but “when,” some form of the program is initiated.
The idea seems simple enough — clean up or pay up — and, while all objections need to be taken into consideration, no official argument can be given until an official plan is released.
Nevertheless, the plan has made pretty strange bedfellows, with red states like Montana and Utah working with blue states like Washington and Oregon, all to create a plan that would move the region forward. The West is moving itself ahead of the curve with hopes that someday someone in Washington will be able to pick up the ball.
10-02-2008