Fed Partnership with States on Climate Law Would Slay Naysaying Dragons

Just published in Environmental Finance is an article I co-authored called Governors on the March (pdf). It argues for the need for federal partnership with state governments on climate legislation. This here is the blog version, complete with an illustration of a fire-breathing dragon to bring the salient points home in case you don't have stomach for the more wonkish original version.

The dragons in question are the naysayers in Congress who killed Lieberman-Warner -- not just Republicans, who this week also killed a renewable energy and job creation bill for good measure, as we reported here. It turns out there's a gang of ten Democrats whose retrograde positions went unrecognized as they weren't breathing fire, only blowing smoke -- but as the Wonk Room points out in an eye-opening analytical post -- those Dems are as good as carrying a torch for the fossil fuel lobby.

The take-away? There's not enough courage or conviction in both poxed Houses to bring home climate law -- despite the will of the people -- and it's probably now wise to tap the states to help lead the way.

For two big reasons.

First, because the nation's most advanced climate experience resides with state governments, which have developed solutions that spur economic benefit.

[There are] 27 states that have or are in the process of developing comprehensive climate action plans. Individually, the size of these state economies rivals those of most countries. State climate policy activity – though nominally subnational – is collectively among the most advanced anywhere. It provides a profound but largely unrecognised platform for national action.

There's more to this as well. If you scale up the climate policies of the 12 states where data is available and apply them to the entire nation, look at the astonishing economic implications:

....if all US states adopted a similar portfolio of climate actions as these 12 leadership states, the nation could cost-effectively achieve a 33% reduction in projected business-as-usual GHG emissions by 2020. This level of reduction would be consistent with a common interim target recommended by many scientists and policy-makers – reducing GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.....[with an aggregate savings of $25 billion.]

This approach also offers another important advantage: it helps to diversify the risk of relying solely on a national cap-and-trade scheme. The policies and measures developed at the state level can strengthen and
support the top-down cap-and-trade approach. They would take the pressure off the trading mechanism to perform perfectly right out of the gate and would distribute the effort to reduce emissions across all sectors of the economy and all levels of government working together.

Second reason? Because partnership with state governments also opens a new political possibility -- for slaying the naysaying dragons.

At the moment, "climate policy" is a juicy target. With skyrocketing oil and gas prices, it's easy for opponents of climate action to breathe the fire of fear into voters with sound bites of "even higher prices" and "even bigger government." But in the home districts an influential constituency has developed that can't be fooled by mythical fire-breathing creatures -- thanks to state action.

The crafting of climate plans at the state level has been based upon a model of bipartisan, multi-sector consensus-building. Utility executives, trucking interests, builders, business leaders and others have worked face-to-face with environmentalists and non-profit public interest groups to develop policy solutions that were in most cases adopted unanimously.

As a result, in the home districts of Congressional representatives, governors have created an informed network of stakeholders committed to responsible climate action and ready to support a needed national response.

Now that Lieberman-Warner has met its long-expected demise, there's an opportunity to fill the void with a new and improved policy construct that draws on the experience of the nation's best climate action practitioners.

Related Information

An Optimistic Movie on American Leadership on Climate Solutions: Finally! (Sea Studios Film)

States Take the Lead on Climate (Yale Environment 360)

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