Five join together in the New West
Following the lead of their peers in New England, five Western state governments in the USA have agreed to work towards to a regional target for carbon emissions cuts. The states are: Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington. In some ways, this is not surprising, since the environmental movement has been strong in the West for over a century.
“The group hopes to agree within 18 months on a market-based cap and trade programme to cut emissions across a range of sectors in each state and to set up a registry to track and manage emissions.
The western initiative, however, threatens to add to the patchwork of regulations that operate across the US, with different standards in different states. It follows a more limited gubernatorial initiative in December 2005 from the governors of seven north-eastern and mid-Atlantic states that targeted emissions from just the utility industry. Three more states are set to join that plan this year.
. . .
Although there have been more than a dozen dif-ferent proposals about national cap and trade schemes, no consensus has emerged. Nancy Pelosi, House speaker, has called for a bill by July 4.
According to Pew, the five states account for 11 per cent of US carbon emissions. Adding them to the north-eastern and mid-Atlantic states in the previous initiative, they would be responsible for more than 22 per cent of US emissions. That would represent the fourth largest emitting nation in the world, or more than the emissions from Japan.”