I just got off a conference call with 120 other people from CA, WA, OR, NM, AZ, and British Columbia. The purpose of the call was to introduce an initiative that the Governors of each of the states and the BC province have begun to regionally address reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through the development of a regional cap and trade market for carbon emissions. In a nutshell, a cap and trade market allows companies that exceed government standards in carbon emissions to sell carbon shares to companies that fail to meet government standards for reduction of carbon emissions. The Western Governor’s Association is providing assistance to the group, in terms of coordination. The goal for the member states and provinces is to set goals by August of this year, and by August of 2008 have some standards in place that will be enforced state-by-state, as well as regionally. The hope is that the members will adopt California’s motor vehicle emissions standards, and mirror the statutory requirements of AB 32.

While I was on the call, I had a flashback to the Governor’s Climate Change Summit last April in San Francisco. At that time, there were members of the panel who were concerned that if California passed a law like AB 32, many of our businesses (upon whose tax revenues we depend) would pull up stakes and move to another state…Nevada was mentioned several times. So, I couldn’t keep my trap shut when it came time for questions and answers. Here was my 2 part question:

1. Are Wyoming, Nevada, Montana, Idaho and Colorado members of the Western Governor’s Association, and if so, what are the chances that they will join this initiative to reduce the temptation for California businesses to flock to those states?
2. At the Governor’s Climate Change Summit, Bill Reilly, former head of the U.S. EPA, said it would be very difficult to institute a cap and trade market unless we know the size of the market. He felt that should be done at the federal level. Question: how will you gather the baseline data to properly price the cap and trade market, and will you involve the regional Chambers of Commerce?

Eileen Tutt, representing Cal EPA, did not know the answer to question #1. (I already knew the answer…they are ALL in the Western Governor’s Association…so why aren’t they joining this initiative?)

Eileen Tutt also mentioned she was at the Governor’s Climate Change Summit, but did not address question #2 at all. No one else on the call did either.

Another funny thing happened on the call…each of the member states did not miss an opportunity to say that their states were involved because of lack of federal leadership on this issue, BUT…this will kill you…they were all worried that the federal government would come up with a national solution before they finished their work and preempt them. Bold-faced paradox, in my estimation.

I hope that each state involves their Chambers of Commerce in this work, and that the WGA can get surrounding states, namely Nevada, onboard before CA sees a mass exodus of business to our neighboring states.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.