Midwest joins northeast, California, in taking action on emissions

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Posted on November 15, 2007
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Greenhouse gas emissions, Ecological hope, Consumer culture, Fossil fuel dependency, Earth spirituality

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

Fed up with inaction on the part of the federal government, six Midwestern states have joined states in the northeast and California in taking action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. An agreement was to be signed in Milwaukee today by six governors and the Canadian province of Manitoba.

The six participating states are: Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas, Michigan, along with Manitoba. Three other states — Indiana, Ohio, and South Dakota — are signing as observers, preferring to wait for a federal standard — don’t hold your breath.

Go here to read about the pact as described in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this morning. The article points out that the 12-state midwest region spews out more than 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, so the decision to make big cuts is no small thing. It will be done with a mix of new clean technologies, including sequestration of CO2 produced by coal-fired power plants, wind turbines, solar, biofuels, and a major push for efficiency on the part of the consumer.

The heart of the matter will be a cap-and-trade system, which we don’t get too excited about. While the carbon credit market is interesting, it is the approach used in the Kyoto Protocol, which has not done much to reduce carbon emissions. Much preferred by this project is a straight out carbon tax. Once you put a price on carbon, you focus the mind regarding cutting the costs of energy production.

My other problem is the prominent role of coal in this pact. Sequestration remains an experimental technology, with concerns being raised about what happens if all the carbon stored in the earth is suddenly released for some as yet unknown reason.

But even worse is that it does not address the earth-degrading, carbon emitting nature of coal mining, as in our favorite symbol of evil in the world of coal, mountaintop removal, along with other forms of strip-mining, big business in Illinois.

But it is an expression of enormous frustration that regions are acting in place of the federal government. It’s a sad statement, really, on the time wasted by what will be 8 years of a Bush administration that sees ravaging of the planet as a way to make profits for the fossil fuel industry.

Here’s an article in today’s Washington Post about a new report from the Center for Global Development showing how the US remains the world’s biggest carbon dioxide emitter, followed, and soon to be surpassed by, China and India. Reminder of two things — the utter importance of a national policy to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions immediately, and the utter importance of the US taking leadership in working with other countries to do the same.

The world is cooking. Here in Wisconsin, local public works agencies keep extending the last curbside leaf pickup. It hasn’t been cold enough for leaves to drop from the trees on their normal schedule — just another sign of how we will be adjusting to things large and small as global warming and resulting climate change settle more persistently into our lives.


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