While voters, businesses, and politicians are calling for carbon regulation, exactly what that regulation would look like is far from decided.

Carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems are the two most-cited proposals for cutting carbon dioxide (CO2), a major contributor to global warming. Supporters argue over which plan would be the most efficient method of cutting emissions while allowing for flexibility in the economy.

A carbon tax is a tax levied on CO2 emissions. Those who favor a carbon tax say it will drive innovations and technologies that allow for the same amount of work to be done with less pollution, and decrease the demand for products that are dirtier and thus more expensive. Critics point out that a tax would have a harsher impact on the poor, while others argue that carbon tax revenues could be used to lower other taxes, like income taxes or payroll taxes.

A carbon tax also makes many elected officials nervous: New taxes, fees, or whatever you want to call them, are rarely popular with voters. One notable supporter of carbon taxes — although he’s not running for office anymore — is Al Gore. He has promoted a carbon tax in addition to implementing a cap-and-trade program.

A cap-and-trade system requires an overall cut in emissions. Companies that cut emissions further than required are issued permits that they can then sell to companies that can’t or won’t cut emissions far enough.

Promoters of cap-and-trade say that the system provides an incentive — rather than a heavy-handed tax approach — to cut emissions because companies can sell the excess permits. It also requires a definitive limit on emissions, while some are afraid that a carbon tax would simply drive companies to pay the fines, pass the increase along to consumers, and keep on polluting. Companies like GE, DuPont, Duke Energy, and Toyota back a cap-and-trade policy, as do many environmental groups and labor unions. Presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Barack Obama also prefer it.

This fall, Congress could see a slew of measures to cut CO2. Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA) are planning to propose a cap-and-trade bill. Representative John Dingell (D-MI) is expected to introduce a carbon tax proposal — not in the hopes of actually passing it, but rather just to show how unpopular such a tax would be.

San Francisco Chronicle
Wall Street Journal, via Environmental Economics

States continue to take the lead in cutting global warming pollution and more may soon follow, spurred by a federal judge’s ruling last week that Vermont can set stricter vehicle emissions standards — stricter than what the federal government requires.

Furthermore, the widespread state action on auto emissions could persuade the government to enact nationwide fuel efficiency laws, rather than leave a patchwork of state regulations for automakers to work around.

The Christian Science Monitor took a look at what’s happening across the U.S., and predicted some ramifications of the Vermont case:

• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may be prompted to grant California a waiver from the Clean Air Act. This would allow California, along with Vermont and the 10 other states with identical laws, to begin enforcing emission requirements for cars sold in their states.

• Six additional states – Arizona, Florida, New Mexico, Utah, Illinois, and Minnesota – may proceed with their own emissions requirements. All together, the 18 states that have vehicle emission laws or that are exploring them make up about half the U.S. auto market.

• Congress may have to reconsider new fuel-efficiency standards it’s currently weighing (which are not as demanding as Vermont’s). Or they could mandate a tougher federal requirement (more of a long-shot, I’d say).

• Federal judges in two similar cases brought by the auto industry in California and Rhode Island could dismiss those cases if they determine the industry has had its day in court and further proceedings would be redundant.

Groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, and Environmental Defense were party to the Vermont lawsuit, and are optimistic that the judge’s ruling will spur other states to action. The auto industry promised to stricter regulations.

The 12 states with emissions laws already on the books could cut up to 100 million tons each year. Overall U.S. emissions from cars and light trucks total about 1.5 billion tons per year.

Christian Science Monitor
Cybercast News Service

Despite Americans’ rightful wariness of nuclear power, other nations are embracing it: France gets 75 percent of its electricity from it, Australian Prime Minister John Howard called nuclear power “inevitable,” and Finland is building a new reactor.

In fact, the U.S.’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is expecting 12 new applications to build nuclear power reactors at seven different sites, plus another 15 are in the pipeline for next year. These are the first full applications to build new nuclear plants in 30 years…what gives?

Oil located in unstable regions of the world and climate change concerns are some oft-sited reasons for the increased interest in nukes. Why try to work with unstable, corrupt governments that have oil when you can mine uranium in places where you’d vacation, like Australia and Canada? Why deal with CO2-spewing coal plants when you can take a deep breath next to a nuclear plant? Except for that huge hairy problem of the dangerous waste hanging around for thousands of years…

Additionally, the NRC has implemented some new processes to apparently make the approval process easier:

• Rather than require utilities to get two different licenses – one to build the plant and the other to start it up – utilities can apply for one license that covers both areas.
• Firms can get nuclear reactor designs cleared in advance. So if a reactor gets the green light, only the modifications unique to the site have to be reviewed.
• A utility can ask the NRC to approve a location before it even applies for a combined license.
• The NRC is hiring about 200 new staff every year and has set up a field office in George to deal with the particularly high number of southern utilities interested in nuclear plants.

Despite these changes, the NRC says it will still take over three years to review an application and conduct hearings.

The problem of what to do with nuclear waste is and should continue to be a serious and significant barrier, and Americans are still divided in their opinion of nuclear energy; in a March poll, about half of respondents favored expanding it. But a September 6th story in the Economist points out that nuclear may start to look more appealing as coal plants face a “regulatory risk” due to assumed future carbon regulation. Just as some energy watchers talk about a “coal rush” (the rush to build coal plants before carbon regulation takes effect), could we see a “nuclear rush” after federal carbon regulation is implemented?

The Economist
Wikipedia

Last week China reiterated its commitment to renewable energy, particularly hydropower. The Asian nation plans to triple its hydropower production to 300,000 megawatts by 2020.

Chinese officials also asked the world to cut them some slack in their efforts to cut global warming pollution.

China’s contribution to global warming has been relatively small compared to the more developed Western nations, they argue, and they shouldn’t be held overly accountable. According to Chen Deming of the National Development and Reform Commission, "I hope the international media will give us some development rights, some development space and not overly blame us."

Wind power and biofuels, in addition to big hydro, will help China reach its goal of producing 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. But it’s the hydropower expansion that is raising the eyebrows of some who are concerned about the large dams’ environmental impact.

Chen Deming argued that cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that contribute to global warming is more important than any negative environmental impact of huge hydropower. Other groups like Greenpeace argue that the damage caused by large dams – like the Three Gorges on the Yangtze River — could have more consequences than conventional power plants because of the massive amount of CO2 released when trees and plant life are destroyed.

AFX News, via Forbes
Associated Press, via DelawareOnline

Image: China’s Three Gorges Dam

There was a questionable bit of progress this past Friday at the Vienna Climate Change Talks, where negotiators agreed on loose targets for cutting the emissions that cause global warming.

The 158 nations represented agreed that industrialized countries should cut global warming emissions by 25-40 percent of 1990 levels by 2020. But nations like Canada, Japan, and Russia delayed the talks, arguing instead for a more "open approach" rather than setting hard and fast targets. In the end, negotiators agreed that the targets would be non-binding and that each nation’s efforts will be "determined by national circumstances and evolve over time."

Some participants saw it as a good sign that developed nations are more serious about cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, while others warn that there’s a lot further to go. Red Constantino with Greenpeace International told the Associated Press that CO2 emissions need to be cut at least 30 percent of 1990 levels by 2020 to avoid the disease, water shortage, and misery certain to afflict the developing world in a warmer climate.

Smaller nations pressured the developed ones for even deeper emissions cuts, to no avail. The UN’s top climate official, Yvo de Boer, pointed out that if the world doesn’t act more quickly to slow climate change soon, these smaller nations will not be around to represent.

The United Nations-backed Vienna conference served as a starting point to guide the high-level international talks that begin in December in Bali. World leaders must begin crafting a new global agreement to put in place after the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

While the U.S. did not ratify Kyoto, President Bush has committed to a series of climate change meetings. The first will be at the end of September in Washington, DC. Fifteen countries, the European Union, and United Nations officials are attending.

Associated Press, via CNN
Washington Post

It’s been a busy week for international climate change negotiations. A meeting of the United Nations and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) have some watchers feeling cautiously optimistic of future global agreements, while others are less than impressed with the semantics.

The Vienna Climate Change talks saw more than a thousand people from government, industry, and research gather in the Austrian capital to discuss ways to fight global warming. This United Nations-backed meeting is preparation for the more high-level talks in New York in September, and Bali in December. The first phase of the Kyoto Protocol will expire in 2012, and nations are scrambling to determine effective next steps that will address climate change mitigation, adaptation, and a global carbon market. Many hope for and expect more participation from nations glaringly absent from the first phase of implementation, like the United States and China.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said he expects the Vienna meetings to give a good indication as to whether governments are ready to take serious action on cutting emissions.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged governments to figure out the next phase of Kyoto three years before the first phase expires so there is time to ratify the law and be ready to go in 2012.

Austrian Environment Minister Josef Proell said in his opening remarks:

"Climate change is a huge challenge that can only be tackled at a global level and in an integrated manner… We do not have much time to create adequate framework conditions. Each year without mitigation measures is a year which drives the human and financial cost of adaptation steeply upwards."

On the other side of the world in Singapore, APEC has drafted a declaration agreeing to cut "energy intensity" by 25 percent by 2030 and plant nearly 50,000 million acres of trees. Energy intensity measures an economy’s energy efficiency – but clean energy supporters say this particular wording avoids any sort of serious commitment to cutting emissions. A spokeswoman for Greenpeace told Bloomberg news: "The APEC declaration is clearly ‘Made in the U.S.’ and covered with a thick coating of Australian coal dust."

Next month at a meeting in Sydney, Australia, APEC nations will agree to fund clean technologies and fight illegal logging. China has said it will support the Sydney declaration on climate change, and the U.S. is expected to attend the meetings.

Bloomberg
Independent Online

A survey of citizens in nine of the world’s most powerful economies has revealed stark differences in their concerns about climate change and the optimism that it can be slowed.

HSBC – one of the largest banking and financial service organizations in the world – surveyed nine thousand citizens across Brazil, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, the UK, and the US for the HSBC Climate Confidence Index 2007. Those in the developing economies showed the greatest concern about climate change, were the most committed to slowing it, and were optimistic that they and their governments could do something about it. In contrast, the British, French, Germans, and Americans had the least confidence in their governments to address climate change and were the least hopeful of tackling the problem overall. Researchers, struck by this low level of confidence, called it "green rejection":

"…a rejection of the problem, of solutions to it, and of the institutions proposing them – is a growing issue in the developed economies. This may represent a natural and temporary stage of disillusionment while people are asked to work hard at something with no visible result. However, there are signs that the rejection is deeper than that. At the core are a strongminded, generally younger, group of people, who are confident with their personal interpretation of climate science, comfortable with uncertainty about the future, and suspicious of the motives of both governments and companies. While a minority, this is a growing constituency that any climate-related initiative needs to recognise."

Indians were the most concerned about climate change (60 percent), citing natural disasters like the 2005 tsunami as reasons for their worry. The Chinese had the highest level of trust that their government would fix the problem (46 percent). Conversely, only 22 percent of British and 32 percent of Americans surveyed said they were worries about climate change.

Of all respondents, climate change ranked second – slightly behind terrorism – among the list of issues people were concerned about.

Hindustan Times
HSBC Climate Confidence Index

German Chancellor Angela Merkel visits China again this week, marking her second official visit to the nation. While she traveled with a delegation of business interests eager to make headway into the burgeoning Asian economy, Merkel’s trip also included some serious talk about climate change solutions.

On Monday, she urged Chinese leaders to do more to cut heat-trapping emissions. That led to the Chinese rebuttal that the West has been polluting the planet much longer than the Chinese have been. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said that although his people want “blue skies, green hills, and clear water,” it’s much harder for China to cut emissions that it is for other, more developed nations like Germany. A rapidly growing economy and a much larger population have put it on the fast-track towards development, but China is wary of climate change policies that would slow its development.

Nonetheless, Wen did promise Merkel that China would work hard to slow global warming in its next five-year plan on the environment that begins in 2011 – that’s in addition to the 20 percent increase in energy efficiency, and a 10 percent cut in emissions planned by 2010.

Merkel noted that industrialized nations should make clean technology available to developing countries, and that China should also develop its own technology or adopt it from abroad. China’s expected annual economic growth of 10 percent is not sustainable with improvements in efficiencies, she noted.

Back in June, G8 leaders agreed to pursue unspecified cuts in global warming emissions and to work with the UN on a post-Kyoto Protocol plan (under Kyoto, China has no emissions gargets because it’s a developing nation). In December, world environment ministers will meet in Bali to begin planning a course of action after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

Reuters
DPA News, via EarthTimes

A U.S. District Court Judge has ruled that the Bush Administration broke federal law when it failed to produce two required global warming reports on time.

The ruling was based on a 1990 law - the Research Plan and National Assessment required by the Global Change Research Act - directing the President to regularly issue two global warming plans: one that guides research and another explaining global warming’s possible impacts on the U.S.

The research plan was last issued in 2003, and is supposed to be updated every three years. The judge set a March 1 deadline for it. The report on global warming’s impacts is supposed to be issues every four years; the last one was updated by the Clinton Administration in 2000. A May 31 deadline has been set for the newest version, which will explain global warming’s projected impacts on the U.S. economy, public health, and the environment.

The Bush Administration tried to argue that it could decide for itself when and how the reports are released. They claimed they were already following the law by working on 21 different global warming reports, and were just starting to prepare a new research plan on the subject. But the judge wrote in the ruling: "The defendants are wrong. Congress has conferred no discretion upon the defendants as to when they will issue revised Research Plans and National Assessments."

The plaintiffs in the case were the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth. The Bush Administration is reviewing the lawsuit and so far hasn’t commented on the ruling.

Center for Biological Diversity
International Herald Tribune
Wired Science

A joint goal among eight western U.S. states and Canadian provinces was formalized this week when the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) announced a goal to cut global warming emissions by 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

The goal is the cumulative total of individual reductions goals for each state and province: for example, Washington has a more ambitious goal of reducing levels of the gases to 1990 levels by 2020.

California, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Manitoba, and British Columbia have agreed to the cuts, which were conceptualized in February as a “Memorandum of Understanding” between five of the states.

The next step is for the WCI to propose a regional carbon emissions trading system with a year, complementing California’s Global Warming Solutions Act that calls for a cap-and-trade system of global warming pollution. Each state will determine its own method for cutting emissions; the agreement doesn’t require any states or provinces to do anything to which they aren’t already committed.

Janice Adair, Washington state’s representative to the WCI, doesn’t anticipate easy negotiations when eight entities come together to set up a market-based system for trading carbon credits: "How we do all that and come to the table — eight very different (states and provinces) — and try to negotiate the best deal we can, and not have anyone go away feeling they got rolled, is going to be very difficult.”

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had a brighter outlook: "Our collective commitment will build a successful regional system to be linked with other regional efforts across the nation and eventually the world.”

Other states like Colorado, Kansas, Nevada, and Wyoming are closely watching the proceedings, as are Ontario and Quebec in Canada and Sonora in Mexico. The potential – or at least the serious interest – is there for other states to get involved in a regional emissions compact and carbon trading agreement. With meaningful energy legislation not coming fast enough from federal governments, states and provinces are reaching across borders to make the real change we need on this side of the world.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Yuba Net