This has been a busy week for climate change activity in the U.S. Here are three stories that struck me as particularly interesting:
Debate Commences on Senate Climate Legislation. The Kerry Boxer bill enters the ring, weighing in at over 800 pages (much of taken from the earlier Waxman Markey bill that passed the House in June), this is the bill that will define America’s response to climate change. Climate policy advocates swarmed the bill as soon as it was released and positions and alliances were already starting to form this week. The emission reduction target has been increased from 17% to 20% below 2005 levels by 2020, the provision for the use of international offsets has been cut back, and a ceiling on carbon price has been proposed. Interestingly, there appears to be relatively strong support in the business community for this bill, but there will be a difficult path to passage. The world community convenes in Copenhagen in December to address the increasingly worrisome warnings that dangerous climate change is closer than had been hoped. Virtually nobody expects the bill to pass before the Copenhagen meeting, but the tenor of the US debate between now and then will go a long way to determining the outcome. Watch for more on this story, much more, in the weeks ahead.
Coming to a Post Office Near You! Perhaps realizing that in the absence of a climate law the administration will have to demonstrate its commitment to greenhouse gas reduction in other ways, President Obama issued an Executive Order this week calling for a 20% reduction in GHG emissions from government operations, and federal agencies have just 90 days to show how they will do it. This is a sleeper. The federal government owns 500,000 buildings and is a significant purchaser of just about everything that uses energy. If the government delivers on these targets it will cause a significant shot in the arm to the US efficiency, renewable energy and recycling industries, and it will have wide ranging repercussions for supply chains everywhere.
PG&E Quits U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protest over its position on climate change. The PG&E blog entry announcing the move, entitled “Irreconcilable Differences”, makes for interesting reading. This is a sign of the times if there ever was one. Those of you who were around in the early days of the climate change policy debate will remember how rare it was to find any business support for action on global warming. That has changed in the last few years as the inevitability of an energy transformation has become apparent, and as astute members of the business community begin to appreciate the upside to climate change policy. American business is waking up to the enormity of the clean energy opportunity, and not a moment too soon.
