While the federal government dallies on climate change, several states are
taking action. Most advanced is the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative,
launched by seven northeastern states from Maine to Delaware. Their plan
will limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and require utilities
to hold emission permits. Still undecided as of mid-2006 is a crucial question:
will polluters pay for their permits, or will they get most of them for
free?
Dozens of citizens’ groups are calling upon the states to auction
emission permits and use the proceeds to reduce costs to consumers. “Historically,
polluters have used our air for free,” says Marc Breslow of the Massachusetts
Climate Action Network. “But there’s no justification for allowing
them to keep doing so. The atmosphere is common property.”
As this is written, some politicians are listening. The Vermont legislature
voted to auction 100 percent of the state’s emission permits, rather
than give them free to polluters. In Massachusetts, a key committee approved
a five-year transition to full auctioning — though the state’s
governor, Mitt Romney, abruptly withdrew Massachusetts from the regional
initiative. In New York, the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, announced
his support for 100 percent auctioning. This could be especially significant
if Spitzer, as seems likely, becomes governor in 2007. ... read
the whole chapter