Erica Stephan

Communications Officer Climate Change Washington

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Wednesday 08 October, 2008

Making climate change local

The furor over the financial markets bailout in Washington this week has overshadowed two major developments in an entirely new market for the U.S. Government-sponsored carbon dioxide trading began yesterday in New York as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative got officially underway. On the other side of the country the Western Climate Initiative issued its policy recommendations on Monday after more than a year of negotiations.

These two cap-and-trade schemes include 17 U.S. states and 4 Canadian provinces between them and are an encouraging sign of U.S. action on climate change. Even without an overarching federal regulation, states and major cities are beginning to move forward. This can be seen in higher California standards for vehicles and appliances; a massive wind power project in Texas; a Climate Action Plan for the city of Chicago that aims at a higher percent reduction in emissions by 2020 than the EU-ETS; and citywide green building standards springing up everywhere.

Climate change is the issue that taught environmentalists to love federalism after years of embracing top-down regulation as the only solution. What's happening now with the states isn't enough to solve the problem by itself, but it is encouraging that the enormous energy and passion at the grassroots has found a way to translate into policy.

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Environmental change can of course be fostered at the local federal level. California is a good example. However environmental leadership from the top is effective. Take the civil rights struggle it took leadership from the centre to generate change at the local. Carbon trading I remain to be convinced. Judging by our current economic woes generated by the market model I am a little wary of markets for carbon. However the RSA here in London is doing good work on this issue http://www.rsacarbonlimited.org/default.aspa

Posted by shane dillon on October 12, 2008 at 11:58 AM BST #

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