Inside Climate News 11/29/2018 By Marianne Lavelle
Democratic election victories raised the odds of climate change policies succeeding, activists and analysts say. A national plan was also just floated in Congress. At least seven state governments are poised at the brink of putting a price on climate-warming carbon emissions within the next year. Some are considering new carbon taxes or fees. Others are making plans to join regional carbon markets.
The situation runs counter to the instant analysis of the November election, which focused on a defeat for carbon pricing in Washington state and discounted incremental progress across the board.
Overall, the midterm election results increased their odds for success, say activists and analysts who are watching for the next step in a policy realm where proposals have been many but commitments to act have been weak.
Carbon price proponents are encouraged as Democrats expanded their legislative majorities in key states, and supporters of climate action displaced foes. But advocates are still painfully aware of remaining obstacles, and some expect a prolonged campaign.
At the federal level, Congress also faces a new carbon pricing proposal, a bill introduced on Tuesday by a bipartisan group of House members. But in the current political climate—with a president who rejects science and promotes fossil fuels, and a Republican majority in the Senate blocking the path—short term progress may be limited to a select few green-leaning states.
"As more states experiment, we'll get more information, and you expand the market size for cleaner energy that's going to create incentives for more market to sell to," said Marc Hafstead, director of the Carbon Pricing Initiative at Resources for the Future, a think tank focused on environmental economics. "There's a fundamental issue, though, in that the states that are ready to move don't represent a lot of the emissions in the U.S. I think, at the end of the day, federal action is going to be required."
All of the states that are now considering a price on carbon share two common traits.
As Hafstead noted, they have relatively low-carbon economies. Adding the states considering new carbon prices to those that already have some sort of carbon pricing—California with its pathbreaking cap-and-trade regime and the northeastern states via the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)—all 14 of the nation's least carbon-intensive states will have adopted fossil fuel surcharges of some kind. Together, they would account for 21 percent of U.S. carbon emissions, 34 percent of the U.S. population, and 40 percent of U.S. GDP.
They also face clear, pressing economic and human risks from climate change. On the West Coast, ocean warming and acidification is damaging the fishing industry and wildfires have menaced whole towns on the heels of drought. In the Northeast, storms and coastal flooding are wreaking havoc and raising costs as the seas relentlessly rise.
If More States Act, Congress May Step UpEconomists have long argued that the most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to put a price on fossil fuels. It drives innovation across the board, from conservation to new, green technology, and rewards the lowest-cost approach.
Policymakers often call the states laboratories of inventive policy, especially with federal action on the back burner.
"Anything that's working to reduce emissions is helpful when the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] says we don't have a ton of time," said Mark Reynolds, executive director of the Citizens Climate Lobby, a carbon pricing advocacy group. "But in addition, it's always been our belief that the real potential benefit is that Congress sees that multiple states are acting and business starts saying, 'We can't function under 10 or 20 sets of rules.'"
More:
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28112018/state-carbon-pricing-tax-fee-climate-change-washington-oregon-new-jersey-virginia-hawaii-massachusetts-new-york
