Posted on 07/31/2006 8:05:26 AM PDT by The_Victor
WASHINGTON -- Britain and California are preparing to sidestep the Bush administration and fight global warming together by creating a joint market for greenhouse gases.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plan to lay the groundwork for a new trans-Atlantic market in carbon dioxide emissions, The Associated Press has learned. Such a move could help California cut carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases scientists blame for warming the planet. President Bush has rejected the idea of ordering such cuts.
Blair and Schwarzenegger were expected to announce their collaboration this afternoon in Los Angeles, according to documents provided by British government officials on condition of anonymity because the announcement was forthcoming.
The aim is to fix a price on carbon pollution, an unwanted byproduct of burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gasoline. The idea is to set overall caps for carbon and reward businesses that find a profitable way to minimize their carbon emissions, thereby encouraging new, greener technologies.
Today's meeting was being hosted by Steve Howard, CEO of The Climate Group, and Lord John Browne, chairman of British Petroleum. British and American business leaders planned to use it to also discuss other ways of accelerating use of low-carbon technologies.
The world's only mandatory carbon trading program is in Europe. Created in conjunction with the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 international treaty that took effect last year, it caps the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted from power plants and factories in more than two dozen countries.
Companies can trade rights to pollute directly with each other or through exchanges located around Europe as long as the cap is met. Canada, one of more than 160 nations that signed Kyoto, plans a similar program.
Although the United States is one of the few industrialized nations that haven't signed the treaty, some Eastern states are developing a regional cap-and-trade program. And some U.S. companies have voluntarily agreed to cap their carbon pollution as part of a new Chicago-based market.
A main target of the agreement between Britain and California is the carbon from cars, trucks and other modes of transportation. Transportation accounts for an estimated 41 percent of California's greenhouse gas emissions and 28 percent of Britain's.
Schwarzenegger has called on California to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to 2000 levels by 2010. California was the 12th largest source of greenhouse gases in the world last year, bigger than most nations.
Blair has called on Britain to reduce carbon emissions to 60 percent of its 1990 levels by 2050. Britain also has been looking at imposing individual limits on carbon pollution. People who accumulate unused carbon allowances — for example, by driving less, or switching to less polluting vehicles — could sell them to people who exceed their allowances — for example by driving more.
Bush has resisted Blair's efforts to make carbon reduction a top international priority. After taking office, Bush reversed a 2000 campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, then withdrew U.S. support from the Kyoto treaty requiring industrialized nations to cut their greenhouse gases to below 1990 levels.
The United States is responsible for a quarter of the world's global warming pollution. Bush administration officials argue that requiring cuts in greenhouse gases would cost the U.S. economy 5 million jobs. Instead, the administration has poured billions of dollars into research aimed at slowing the growth of most greenhouse gases while advocating a global cut on one of them, methane.
"The green fundamentalists have never been shy about casting the first stone.
If the world fries because of climate change, they thunder, it will be America's fault. Or, more specifically, George W.'s, because he took the Kyoto Protocol out of the desk drawer where Bill Clinton had stashed it for several years, and definitively binned it. "
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1674996/posts
Clinton counted the votes prior to submitting the treaty to the US Senate. It was never considered by the legislative branch, thus the US never "withdrew" from anything.
How about people that don't have any kids, like me? After all, one of the most environmentally-incorrect things a person could do is burden the earth with more "polluters", right? Damn, I'm gonna be rich!!
I'm constantly amazed at the lack of depth in AP's reporting. It wasn't always this way, I can assure you...
From Article I, Section 10:
"No State shall, without the consent of Congress ... enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power ..."
Foreign relations are delegated to the Federal Government, not to State Governors. Ah-Nold is off base on this one.
So Arnold speaks for the U.S. now?
"I thought, per the Constitution, that only the federal government could enter into international treaties."
Since our constitution does say this, a lot of things are called into question with this scenario...
I wonder how many carbon credits California gets for allowing the USFS to neglect Forest management - encouraging massive fuel build up and resultant heavy wildfire. (Why the Gov. has even exacerbated the situation by unilaterally declaring all roadless areas made under Clinton to remain without roads.) In my valley, we cannot even go outside, the place is so choked with smoke. Of course, no one can get to the fires, so I am told they will continue to burn into winter when the rains and snows put them out.
I read somewhere that someone quipped that California was our only State with its own foreign policy. Here's some more proof of that.
The US needs to place sanctions on the rogue state of Californication
Seems like the best market of all would be China and India and other third world countries who are exempted from the Kyoto protocol emissions caps.
They could easily outbid the other countries with their cheaper cost emission levels.
So let's 'sell' all out carbon emissions to them.
.we have enough sanctions on us already...like subsidizing half the U.S. anyway.....
So California is its own country now? Californico? ('course we always knew that, guess it's now official) Where's a San Andreas fault when you need one?
....I thought that was for treaties etc....I think any state can enter into business transactions with anyone that isn't a terrorist state....they do it all the time.....
Deport the illegals. They don't get their old toyota trucks smogged.
Also, try to imagine liberals giving up their SUVs.
Please. The correct name is Mexifornia.
LOL, the ghost of Christie Todd Whitman lives. Bush gave one stump speech in front of a small crowd where a writer inserted CO2 as a pollutant to be regulated. Bush was very clear in the debates and in every other speech that he would not regulate CO2. This was the reason CTW was canned.
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