CAP: Success of Northeast Regional Cap-and-Trade System Shows Market-Based Climate Policy

[pampango]

Is Well Within Reach

The success of a regional cap-and-trade program in reducing carbon pollution in the U.S. Northeast over the past few years has scarcely been mentioned in the debate over how to reduce carbon pollution.

Unwilling to wait for the federal government to enact sensible carbon limits and clean energy investment policies, nine U.S. states—Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont—joined together in 2008 to create the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI.

Since its inception, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative has delivered cost-effective results for power companies and consumers. Today the program announced plans to set a new carbon-reduction goal that is 45 percent more ambitious than the one before it. This is great news for consumers and energy companies in the Northeast—and for the climate.

The oft-repeated mantra of both conservatives and progressives is that “the states are the laboratories of democracy”—places where innovative policy solutions can be tested and vetted before being adopted more broadly at the federal level. The fact that these nine states—together comprising roughly 20 percent of all U.S. economic output—have been so successful at reducing carbon emissions from power plants should serve as a wake-up call to policymakers in Washington.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2013/02/07/52356/success-of-northeast-regional-cap-and-trade-system-shows-market-based-climate-policy-is-well-within-reach/

This report is going to cause some sleepless nights on the right. "Cap-and-trade" is one of the programs they believe 'liberal socialists' are trying to impose on them.

From the 2012 Texas GOP party platform:

Cap and Trade – We oppose Cap and Trade (“Cap and Tax”). (page 19)

http://s3.amazonaws.com/texasgop_pre/assets/original/2012Platform_Final.pdf

"Among Tea Party activists, ideology also plays a part in their rejection of cap and trade as a solution to global warming.

...Big Oil, Dirty Coal, and other special interests have spent hundreds millions of dollars over the past two years to convince legislators, politicians, and citizens to oppose cap and trade and other measures that would create jobs, cut oil use, and reduce pollution. Center for American Progress Action Fund analyses find that these interests spent at least $68 million in 2010 alone to air misleading and fictitious ads on global warming. What’s more, many of these same interests spent over $500 million in 18 months to lobby Congress to oppose clean energy and global warming legislation. "

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/10/24/206921/gop-cap-and-trade-flip-flop/