What's Wrong With the Western Climate Initiative?

COMMENT: This is from the Seattle-based sustainability think-tank, SightLine. It offers one insight into the seriousness of intent of the BC government - Premier Campbell is an enthusiastic participant of the Western Climate Initiative - to rein in carbon emissions. Omit transportation fuels from emissions control, and it's like doing finger exercises to lose twenty pounds - ain't gonna work.

A second insight may be the firing this week of Louise Comeau (second article, below), perhaps the one person brought into a senior position on the Premier's Climate Action Team whom the environmental community knew, and thought they could trust.

What's Wrong With the Western Climate Initiative?

First proposal ducks biggest climate problem.

The Western Climate Initiative is a path-breaking effort. Insufficient federal progress prompted seven states and two provinces to join together to reduce climate pollution by means of an economy-wide cap and trade program. It's a momentous opportunity, and Sightline has been working hard to ensure that it's a success.

Unfortunately, there's now cause for serious concern.

Yesterday evening, WCI released it's draft proposal (pdf). It proposes an initial cap that would cover less than half of the region's total emissions. And most surprisingly, WCI does not recommend including emissions from transportation fuels, by far the largest source of climate pollution in the West. [Update 3/7: The recommendation doesn't exclude transportation precisely, but rather defers the decision until further economic studies are completed.]

The proposal is at odds with WCI's own stated principles that include a commitment to cover "as many emissions sources as practical." And for an effort born of frustration with federal lawmakers, it's bizarre that the proposal is significantly smaller in scope than recent federal bills, including Leiberman-Warner.

There are no big technical challenges to including transportation fuels. In fact, the WCI admits that while there are a couple of hurdles, it's administratively feasible to include transportation emissions. So what's going on?

No one knows for sure.

I have every reason to believe that Washington's and Oregon's representatives are taking the responsible approach; that they're negotiating for a broad scope to include transportation fuels.

That's as it should be, since without reductions from the transportation sector, it will be virtually impossible for the Northwest states to reach their climate goals. In fact, fully 47 percent of Washington's emissions come from the transportation sector alone.

Perhaps other states are reluctant to go along with a true economy-wide cap on carbon. Perhaps there are misunderstandings about how href="http://daily.sightline.org/daily_score/archive/2008/03/06/what-s-wrong-with-the-western-climate-initiative/resolveuid/e15cd882958705d6eb8b78ef5459c9a7">price affects demand. Perhaps there's simply fear of political fallout from pinching oil companies.

Or perhaps I'm being too hard on WCI. The truth is, it's very hard to tell what, exactly, they intend to do in the future. In places, they seem to want to include transportation, but then they also want to consider some other, untried, options as a substitute for an enforceable cap -- things like href="http://daily.sightline.org/daily_score/archive/2008/03/06/what-s-wrong-with-the-western-climate-initiative/resolveuid/59b8022f5df608c9235045bfac7c5e48">low-carbon fuel standards. They seem to want further economic analysis, and then they seem to gesture at excluding transportation if it's deemed that prices will rise.

Mostly, WCI seems to want to delay making a decision. But it's a decision so fundamental to the program that it affects every other decision. In fact, it jeopardizes the integrity of the entire initiative.

Maybe the best way of understanding what's going on is buried at the end of a technical appendix:

A problem with covering oil upstream is that the only compliance options available to regulated entities are buying allowances, selling or blending non-fossil fuels, or reducing fuel sales.

That's supposed to be a problem. But that's the whole point of a cap and trade program. That's the whole mechanism for reducing emissions. Oil companies will get three -- count 'em three -- options. They can pollute less; they can sell cleaner fuel; or they can buy pollution permits from other companies who will reduce their own pollution instead.

We can be flexible and creative about our approach, but there's no free lunch. If we don't reduce our climate pollution, we could be facing some href="http://daily.sightline.org/daily_score/archive/2008/03/06/what-s-wrong-with-the-western-climate-initiative/resolveuid/f9a896a0d1bd13c44c004e0e25f295e4">unpleasant consequences. We know what the problem is, and we know how to fix it. The only question now is whether we have the spine for good policy.

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Postscript: if you want to get down and dirty with Sightline's argument for WCI's appropriate scope, here's the full monty.

By SEAN HOLMAN
24 HOURS
March 13, 2008

Prominent environmentalist Louise Comeau - one of the premier's key climate action advisors - has been fired by the provincial government, 24 hours has learned. Her firing comes just eight months after she was hired as the climate action secretariat's public outreach and strategic engagement executive director.

Reached for comment, Comeau - who was awarded a four-month severance package - gave this brief statement: "It seems the fit wasn't right. And I wish everybody luck. And the issue is very important. And I hope the government succeeds in what it's trying to do."

Government was tight-lipped when contacted about the firing, refusing to respond to repeated requests for details. But New Democrat environment critic Shane Simpson was more verbose.

"Ms. Comeau came to this position with quite a bit of fanfare because of the environmental credentials and the credentials around community engagement that she brought to the table," Simpson said. "She's now been fired. And somebody should be explaining whether it's this government's complete lack of willingness to engage the public and do the right thing that forced her out."

Comeau joined the secretariat following a storied career as an environmental advocate, which included a stint as the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' sustainable communities and environmental policy director.