Thursday, October 13, 2016

A Key Moment for California Climate Policy - by Robert Stavins

Jammed California Freeway (Credit: Shutterstock) Click to enlarge.
California's Role in Global Climate Change Policy
California sent a delegation to the Paris talks.  While not officially a party to the negotiations, California government officials attended to show support for broad and meaningful action.  For many years, spurring action beyond California's borders has been the key rationale for developing a California-based climate policy.  This began with Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32), the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.  Initially, the focus was on encouraging action within the United States, including federal legislation, state-level actions, and multi-state compacts, but subsequent domestic action turned out to be much less than originally anticipated.  As a result, California's focus shifted to the international domain.

This is a good time to consider how the State can best demonstrate leadership on this global stage.  Action by all key countries, including the large emerging economies — China, India, Brazil, Korea, and South Africa — will be necessary to meaningfully address the climate problem.  Significant multinational contributions will be necessary to avoid having California's aggressive in-state actions be for naught.  Absent such multilateral action, ambitious California policies do little or nothing to address the real problem.

But California can play a very important role by showing leadership — in two key ways.  One is to demonstrate a commitment to meaningful reductions in (greenhouse gas) GHG emissions. In this regard, California has more than met the bar, with policies that are as aggressive as — if not more aggressive than — those of most countries.

The other way is to show leadership regarding how reductions of GHG emissions can best be accomplished — that is, in regard to progressive policy design.  California has a sophisticated GHG cap-and-trade system in place, which while not perfect, has many excellent design elements.  Countries around the world are now planning or implementing cap-and-trade systems, including in Europe, China, and Korea.  These countries are carefully watching decisions made in California, with particular attention to the design and implementation of its cap-and-trade system.  California's system, possibly with a few improvements, could eventually be a model for even larger systems in other countries.

Can California Provide a Good Model of Progressive Policy?
Unfortunately, California's climate policy has not relied heavily on its cap-and-trade system to achieve state targets.  Furthermore, rather than increasing reliance on this innovative market-based climate policy over time, recent proposals have doubled-down on the use of less efficient conventional policies to achieve GHG reductions.  While some of these so-called "complementary policies" can be valuable under particular circumstances, they can also create severe problems.

Read more at A Key Moment for California Climate Policy

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