31 states target global warming

Source: LAT

Led by California, 31 states representing more than 70% of the U.S. population announced Tuesday that they would measure and jointly track greenhouse gas emissions by major industries.

The newly formed Climate Registry is the latest example of states going further than the federal government in taking steps to combat global warming. State officials, along with some industrial groups and environmentalists, say the registry is a crucial precursor to both mandatory and market-based regulation of industrial gases that contribute to warming.
....
The registry participants range from states that are moving aggressively to impose mandatory greenhouse gas reduction policies to others that are just beginning to examine whether to take even voluntary steps.

"This includes a lot of deeply conservative states who have signed on that we weren't expecting," said Nancy Whalen, spokeswoman for the California Climate Action Registry, the only current statewide emissions tracking system, which helped develop the multistate program.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-greenhouse9may09,0,5999838.story?coll=la-home-nation

From "The Climate Registry" site here: http://www.theclimateregistry.org/crpress.html
(Since the map is a PDF file I copied and made it into a jpg file for easy viewing.)

And thanks to the original poster too, for a very encouraging news item. By the way, British Columbia in Canada is getting together with some of the "green" western states to do CO2 emissions trading. The East Coast jurisdictions already have some policies in place together (including their own mini-international agreement). It's great to hear that people are not waiting for the White House to change its mind.

this particular "stay the course" WH to change it's mind since they the chances are slim to none that that will even when presented with facts out the wazoo. :eyes:

Disappointing and a bit surprising. I thought Iowa would be on it. Maybe they'll still join up. I hope so.

K&R.

As a Virginia I am appaled...North Carolina and South Carolina are in, we have a Dem Gov, a Dem Senator, and Northern Virginia is the 2nd most Hybrid-car populated area in the nation and we're sucking sweat with Texas, Alabama, Idaho? Come on VA, get off it.

of climate change already (although they are pretty red). The rest, sadly, are no surprise at all. :-(

if you want co2 emmisions to reduce you can only reduce your population or dcrease gdp, both of these options would be unlikely to be followed so why bother at all.

:eyes:

Gee, only because the fate of the planet depends on it.

Welcome to DU

Enjoy your stay.

decarbonization = switching to energy sources that release less CO2, such as using natural gas instead of coal (less CO2 per BTU)

decoupling = economy growing while energy use remains the same, or even drops (e.g. through decarbonization, more efficient technology, or increasing investment in sectors that use less energy per dollar of output). Even Bush's people admit that this is possible -- hence their harping on "emissions intensity" per dollar of GDP.

energy use can't stay the same unless some genius comes up with a miracle gizmo that can be manufactured with little energy and produce a microscopic amount of emissions. We can't consume like there is no tomorrow or there won't be much of one for the vast majority of humanity.

bush and others are on the ethanol bandwagon and yet if they converted every crop in the US of A to growing corn for ethanol it would not meet America's current gas usage according to one study I read. Also ethanol refineries are not required to comply with what is left of the Clean Air Act so they are burning coal to make ethanol. argh.

.... appearing to be the "only" alternatives, though you make an important point about how we shouldn't rely on "miracle gizmos".

Thing is -- a lot of the technology that can reduce energy use is already out there. Higher mileage standards, better-designed homes and neighborhoods, powerplants that are more efficient -- even those much-vaunted CFL bulbs -- can help reduce energy consumption. It won't hurt to upgrade to these.

"Technical fixes" like biofuels or hydrogen shouldn't be viewed as a substitute for lowering consumption across the board, reining in the more insane parts of globalization (like shipping apples from China to Washington State), having smaller families, or altering our manufacturing processes to a cradle-to-cradle system.


p.s. various economies, like Canada and the UK, did show that it was possible to decouple economic growth from the production of various pollutants. This is one reason why claims that reducing carbon emissions would destroy the economy are being criticized as overly simplistic and alarmist.

that's why.

It's Global Heating. "Warming" understates the problem. Frame the issue!

Time to do some framing of our own. Enough with the Frank Luntz framing of "climate change", and "global warming" is not a strong enough identification of the real challenge.

It is Global Heating, folks.

Only winters are going to seem warm. Summers are going to be hot, hot, hot.

The Green Campus Initiative

matters into their own hands on this issue.