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Dawdling Feds Fidget While States Act

April 17, 2006

The creative genius of the Founding Fathers is making itself felt on an issue far beyond the experience and mind sets of 18th century statesmen – global warming and its potential to put dangerous, unprecedented stress on human society.

The creative genius is the federalism that was designed into the American system of government. The Founders did not invent federalism, but they made exquisite use of the idea to make government work more effectively for the people it is supposed to serve.

Here's why that foresight is paying off. On global warming, many of our natiomal leaders are largely clueless about the science of climate change and indifferent to the risks that a changing climate presents to public health, the economy, and our nation’s security. Obstinate resistance on the part of key officials and lawmakers to acknowledging climate science, mixed with lack of political will, has poisoned the political well in Washington, DC.

In fairness, there are hopeful signs that the urgency of the problem is beginning to penetrate the Beltway. However, the likelihood of passage for the McCain-Lieberman bill, or something similar that institutes a market-oriented system of tradable greenhouse gas emissions caps, is close to nil in an election year.

Thankfully, states are filling part of the policy gap. In the Northeast last month, seven states released a “model rule” for the participating states to adopt cap-and-trade systems for limiting carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. If the rules are adopted, an emissions reduction clock will start ticking in 2009. The goal is to reduce emissions to the 2009 level by 2015, then reduce them 10 percent by 2018.

The governors of the seven participating states are a bipartisan mix – three Republicans (Connecticut, New York, and Vermont) and four Democrats (Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, and New Jersey). After some prodding by his Legislature, Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich, a Republican, recently signed legislation to bring his state into the program.

A few weeks later and 3,000 miles away, an “action team” tasked by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger released a proposal that could lead to a cap-and-trade system in California. The plan recommends using a target Schwarzenegger set in an executive order last year – cut California’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has little patience for calls by federal officials that climate action should be left to voluntary measures. The scientific debate is over and it’s time to act, the former Hollywood action movie star declared at a climate summit in San Francisco this month.

Schwarzenegger is a big fan of solar energy. When special interest politics blocked the governor’s Million Solar Roofs incentive proposal in the Legislature, he pushed the state Public Utilities Commission to enact largely the same program administratively earlier this year.

Don’t think that clean energy action is limited to the bluish/purplish states on the nation’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts. In 2005, Texas nearly tripled the compliance target for the state’s wildly successful renewable energy portfolio standard. Enacted in 1999, under then-Governor George W. Bush, the standard required 2,000 megawatts of new renewable energy to be installed by 2009, beyond the 880 megawatts in place at the time. Seven years later, wind generation capacity in the Lone Star State has more than doubled, to nearly 2,000 megawatts.

Last year, Governor Rick Perry signed legislation setting the bar higher, to 5,880 megawatts by 2015. The Texas Legislature set a goal of 10,000 megawatts of renewables in place by 2025.

The wind blows as hard across Montana’s short-grass prairies as it does across Texas’ wide-open spaces. Last year, the Montana Legislature passed a standard that 15 percent of electricity sold in the state by privately owned utilities must come from renewable sources by 2015.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress was passing an energy bill that, in spite of its useful conservation and wind energy incentives, was largely a colossal barrel of lard for carbon-rich fossil fuels. An effort to add the McCain-Lieberman bill to the energy legislation as an amendment fell short.

At some point soon, the federal government will have to get into the climate policy game. For human society to have a reasonable chance of stopping and then reversing the buildup of atmospheric greenhouse gases, leadership from the world’s largest economy is essential. Washington will have to get off its collective duff before long.

Meanwhile, the states will lead the way. For that, thank our Founding Fathers and their foresight in designing a federal structure into our Constitution.