Sticking It to the Senate

While the Senate may not have the foresight and determination to pass the cap and trade carbon emissions bill because of outside pressures, there are still some people who do have a conscious and a backbone.  The Senate can choose not to pass the bill but that does not mean that states cannot independently take action to do their part in reducing global warming effects.  A group of western states and Canadian provinces has joined together to form the Western Climate Initiative.  Their goal is to reduce carbon emissions to 15% below 2005 levels by 2020; it's not a huge change... baby steps.  This would be a landmark and huge stepping stone on the path to lower carbon emissions and improved energy efficiency.  With the new carbon caps, power plants and automobile makers will be forced to be more efficient, which means less wasted energy and carbon emissions.  Most likely and hopefully, this will lead to new energy research and plant developments, like nuclear, wind, solar, etc, that will eventually create a zero net emissions process.  We have already dug ourselves into a hole that cannot be reversed for centuries but with any luck by the end of the century temperatures will be the same as now.

To achieve their goal, the WCI intends to initiate its own market based cap and trade legislation.  The laws are still in planning stages but they have a general outline.  First a general total cap on carbon emissions will be set on power plants.  This will force them to be cleaner and more environmentally friendly.  They also have regulation against importing electricity from power plants that are not a part of the carbon capped program.  However, in states like California transportation is the largest producer of carbon emissions.  Regulating vehicles is much more difficult because if the restrictions are too severe the California residents will revolt and kill the project.  Prius and hybrid vehicles are already rewarded and common in California and becoming more popular daily, but to ease the change vehicle carbon restrictions most likely will not be introduced until 2015.  (However, due to the admirable social and environmental conscience of California residents, it has become taboo to drive a conventional gas vehicle.  In some neighborhoods you are shunned if you drive an SUV or the vehicle is vandalized via spray paint or keyed.  This social pressure is the best momentum for electric vehicles that one could hope for).

Granted, this is the in the infant stage.  It will likely have many problems and meet much resistance at the start.  Logistical problems will pop up like determining the total acceptable carbon emissions level, how many credits each person gets (without being corrupted by lobbyists or money), monitoring the carbon emissions in an affordable and practical way, etc.  Despite any of these problems, this is still a huge leap forward for the US. Hopefully it will serve as the example for the rest of the country to set up its own legislation if the Senate won't.  With any luck people will realize that the cap and trade can work effectively...