Sophisticated Interdependence in Climate Policy: Federalism in the United States, Brazil, and Germany
220
Sophisticated Interdependence in Climate Policy: Federalism in the United States, Brazil, and Germany
220Paperback
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783080175 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Anthem Press |
| Publication date: | 02/15/2014 |
| Series: | Anthem Sustainability and Risk Series |
| Pages: | 220 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Sophisticated Interdependence in Climate Policy
Federalism in the United States, Brazil, and Germany
By Vivian E. Thomson
Wimbledon Publishing Company
Copyright © 2014 Vivian E. ThomsonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78308-110-3
CHAPTER 1
CLIMATE CHANGE CONTRADICTIONS IN THE STATES
Increasingly, those that would want to deny that there is a change in the global climate are becoming fewer and quieter. — Patricia Mulroy, general manager, Southern Nevada Water Authority
Patricia Mulroy fears climate change. Ms Mulroy became general manager of the Las Vegas, Nevada, Valley Water District and the Southern Nevada Water Authority in 1991. The district provides water to millions of people, residents and tourists alike, in a desert where average rainfall is about four inches a year and average daily temperatures exceed 80 degrees Fahrenheit six months every year. For water and electric power Las Vegas depends on nearby Hoover Dam and its huge reservoir, Lake Mead, two of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's signature 1930s public works accomplishments. In fact, Las Vegas could not exist without the Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, and the Colorado River.
At one time Las Vegas had the reputation of being a place where water was wasted with abandon. Huge, elaborate fountains in front of casinos belie the city's location in one of the driest places in the United States. But businesses and government agencies in the Las Vegas area have increased conservation and diminished their "water footprint." Las Vegas residents are paid to stop growing grass and to plant xeric landscapes. Demand-side water management is fundamental to everyday life in Las Vegas.
The impetus for this turnabout in attitude and practices has been a fourteen-year drought that has plagued the western United States and caused Lake Mead to drop to about 50 percent of its capacity, causing a 100 foot tall "bathtub ring." The drought has made a climate change believer of Ms Mulroy. She says Las Vegas is a "bullseye" for the resultant effects: "We were seeing the consequences of climate change first ... we had to bring about a fundamental change in how people use water in this community."
To help provide certainty in water supply Nevada has signed a new water sharing strategy with the other western states that depend on the Colorado River. In 2007 seven states signed a regional compact that divides up the flow of the Colorado River in times of shortages. Earlier versions of that compact stretch back to 1922 and it has been the source of much contention over the years. But Ms Mulroy worries that even this new agreement will not suffice in the face of the shrinking water supplies that result from a warmer climate. Despite the sea change in behavior she has observed in Las Vegas, Ms Mulroy is concerned that Americans view clean water as a fundamental human right but are not willing to pay for the infrastructure necessary to deliver that "right." A bright spot is an improved working relationship with other Colorado River–dependent states. She labels this new cooperative relationship a "sophisticated interdependence" that is the "only way we can survive moving forward."
One might expect the state of Nevada to share Ms Mulroy's concerns over the effects of climate change on water availability, but the evidence is mixed on this front. In 2008 Republican governor Jim Gibbons' Climate Change Advisory Committee published a lengthy report on the impacts of climate change in Nevada with recommendations that included developing renewable energy resources (especially solar), increasing demand-side management for electrical power, and developing a Climate Action Plan. Governor Gibbons signed a new energy law in 2009 that increased to 25 percent the proportion of electrical power to be produced from renewable sources by 2025 (the state's goal had been 20 percent renewable power by 2015), required energy efficiency measures for public facilities, and mandated that car dealers disclose information about carbon dioxide emissions from new cars. Nevada is home to Solar One, one of the largest solar power producing facilities in the world, and the state has extensive geothermal resources.
But as of this writing the Nevada Climate Action Plan is not in evidence and the Climate Change Advisory Committee's 2008 report could not be found on any state website. Nevada Energy, the state's major power producer, has met its renewable portfolio requirement by purchasing power produced in states with no renewable portfolio laws. Critics complain that such purchases violate the spirit of the law, which was supposed to stimulate green energy development within Nevada. Republican governor Brian Sandoval has publicly advocated the development of renewable energy, and in 2013 Sandoval supported a proposal by Nevada Energy to phase out coal-fired power.
Meanwhile, neighboring state California presses ahead with the first greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program in the United States to include a wide variety of polluting sources. In 2006 Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which mandates an economy-wide emissions cap with enforceable penalties. The California Air Resources Board has adopted an emissions trading program as a central element of the state's climate change program. Democratic governor Jerry Brown calls climate change skeptics "denialists" and he signed into law in 2011 a mandate that by 2020 33 percent of the state's electricity should come from renewable sources. In April 2013 Governor Brown approved the linkage of California and Québec's greenhouse gas emission trading scheme. The 2013 California–Québec pact aims to harmonize and integrate the Parties' cap-and-trade programs.
Observers from other nations might struggle to understand the existence of such disparate political actions within a state and between neighboring states. On a superficial level, disconnected and startlingly different state-level greenhouse gas action is possible in the United States because there is no national climate change or renewable energy law. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has moved ahead cautiously to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. In 2013 EPA proposed national standards for new fossil fuel electrical generating facilities. If EPA proceeds as expected each state must submit by June 2016 a plan for regulating existing fossil fuel electrical power plants that follows EPA guidelines to be finalized in June 2015. But for now the states currently are free to undertake a variety of climate policies, ranging from doing nothing, the path chosen by states like Virginia and Louisiana, to aggressive action, undertaken by states like California and New York.
In fact, it's quite usual in the United States for the states to undertake environmental action before the federal government. Action by the states was part of the impetus for national environmental legislation in the 1970s after businesses realized it would be better to deal with a unified federal approach than with the "multi-headed Hydra" of many state systems. What's unusual in the greenhouse gas and renewable energy arena is the breadth and extent of state action. Three active regional accords aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across state borders: the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which caps carbon dioxide emissions from power plants in 11 northeastern states; the Western Climate Initiative, under whose umbrella California, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, and Québec have agreed to reduce regional greenhouse gas emissions and to try to coordinate their respective greenhouse gas policies; and, the Transportation and Climate Initiative, which involves 12 northeastern and mid-Atlantic states who aim to develop clean energy systems and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector. Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia have set renewable portfolio standards, which require that utilities generate a specified percentage of their power from renewable sources.
The existence of three important regional accords hints at the possibility that some states are investing in a form of what Ms Mulroy calls "sophisticated interdependence." However, state-based renewable energy and climate change efforts have also exhibited fluidity in political leadership, especially at the executive level. The Western Climate Initiative originally included six other western states, but they all dropped out. In 2007 six governors signed the Midwest Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord, which was intended to generate a regional emissions trading program, but the accord has become inactive. A governor's commission in Virginia developed a Climate Change Action Plan in 2008 but virtually no aspect of that plan has been enacted into law.
The wide range of state and regional efforts in the climate change and green energy arenas provides an opportunity to illuminate the political and economic factors that might shape different kinds of state programs. To that end I developed with my colleague, Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center, a three-tiered typology based on state regulatory response. "Active" states are strong leaders in the climate change arena with a long history of environmental stewardship and environmental policy action. "Surprise" states are those whose actions in the renewable energy and/or climate change arena have been surprising given their geographic location, energy mix, or both. "Passive" states are coastal states vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change whose policymakers have not reached beyond the study stage in the climate change or renewable energy arenas.
California, New York, and Washington are the "active" states examined here. An analysis of climate change and the states begs to include California and New York because they are both acknowledged leaders in climate change, they are at opposite ends of the country, and they are both large in area and in population. Political dedication to climate change mitigation crosses party lines in California and New York. To take just one example, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has been a Democrat, a Republican, and an independent, has called climate change the cause of 2012's devastating Hurricane Sandy. Washington is included here as an active state because of its strong leadership in the climate change arena. Washington's outspoken former governor, Christine Gregoire, was vocal in her support for reducing state greenhouse gas emissions.
Texas, Maryland, and Florida are states whose participation in greenhouse gas reduction or renewable energy programs has been somewhat surprising. Texas is the leading producer of oil and gas in the United States and is the state with by far the highest carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Maryland relies on coal-fired power plants but, nonetheless, has forged ahead of its coal-dependent mid-Atlantic neighbors with a greenhouse gas reduction plan. Florida is the only state in the South to have undertaken a program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Florida legislature enacted the Florida Climate Protection Act in 2008 and Governor Charlie Crist, a Republican, signed the act into law. But in 2012 the Florida legislature repealed that law and Republican governor Rick Scott signed the repeal. I explore the shifting political sands in Florida in the analysis that follows.
Louisiana, South Carolina, and Virginia have been passive in the climate change and renewable energy arenas despite the vulnerability of their considerable coastlines and the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Ms Arroyo has been a policymaker in Louisiana and I have been an air pollution policymaker in Virginia, and thus we have insiders' perspectives on the challenges and missed opportunities in Louisiana and Virginia. In South Carolina policymakers have not undertaken meaningful action in the greenhouse gas arena, even though much of the state's economy depends on beach and coastal tourism. Having three southern states in the passive category makes sense, since that region of the country has been least active in the climate change and renewable energy arena.
At first glance it might seem tempting to attribute the differences among these states to partisanship, since the two major US parties have become increasingly polarized on many social issues in the past 20 years. However, for these nine states partisanship – as reflected in party of the governor – by itself does not predict how active or passive a state has been in the climate change and energy arena since 1990, the period when climate change has emerged as a central issue in the United States and elsewhere around the world. When it comes to governors who have held office since 1990 we find a mix of Democrats and Republicans in all states but Washington:
California: two Democrats, three Republicans
New York: four Democrats, one Republican
Washington: four Democrats, no Republicans
Texas: one Democrat, three Republicans
Florida: two Democrats, four Republicans (Republican Charlie Crist switched to independent while still governor, when he ran for the US Senate)
Maryland: four Democrats, one Republican
Virginia: three Democrats, three Republicans
Louisiana: two Democrats, three Republicans, one Democrat turned Republican
South Carolina: one Democrat, four Republicans
The best that can be said for partisanship per se as an explanatory factor is that no passive state has had a preponderance of Democratic governors and that two active states have had mostly Democratic governors.
The analysis that follows in this chapter and Chapter 2 compares the forces that might affect these nine states' actions, lack thereof, or, for Florida, contradictory political actions, in the greenhouse gas and renewable energy arenas. Ms Arroyo and I did not select states at random or extrapolate these findings to the other 41 states. However, these results have important lessons about the political, cultural, and economic forces that affect climate change policymaking. Since many of these same forces make themselves felt in national environmental policymaking, and also given the centrality of the states in implementing air pollution policy in the United States, the lessons drawn from these nine states help illuminate how to structure a productive state–national partnership in the climate change arena.
Here and in Chapter 2 I draw heavily on the research I conducted with Ms Arroyo and published in the Virginia Environmental Law Journal, with revisions dictated by new developments. While per capita data presented are from 2010 and 2011, rankings for those variables have been reasonably stable since 2000, thereby providing background conditions for the policy events described.
Nine State Climate and Energy Programs
Sharing and dividing authority among the national, state, and local governments is a hallmark of the American federal system. The United States's most powerful upheaval, the Civil War, and central sociopolitical conflicts have revolved around federalism. Despite the passage of several decades since widespread civil rights demonstrations and riots led to powerful laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, states' rights arguments are still associated with the country's painful history of slavery and segregation. Federalism expert Martha Derthick says the notion of state authority in the United States has "lacked steadfast friends" and suffers from lingering connections with racism and human rights violations. The enduring tension between the state governments and the national government spills over into the climate change arena.
The framers of the US Constitution defended our federal system, claiming it would ensure that no governmental power would remain unchecked. Fear of monarchical power was fresh in the framers' minds. They wanted to give Americans many points of access to governmental authority. Champions of the US federal system point to a "richly representative array of institutions" and a "more flexible, responsive politics" as compared with a unitary form. Some of these admirable features of federalism are on display when we examine state-level greenhouse gas programs.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Sophisticated Interdependence in Climate Policy by Vivian E. Thomson. Copyright © 2014 Vivian E. Thomson. Excerpted by permission of Wimbledon Publishing Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments; Tables and Figures; Introduction: The World’s Most Prominent Climate Change Outlaw; Chapter 1: Climate Change Contradictions in the United States; Chapter 2: Constraints and Opportunities: Forces Affecting State-Level Climate and Energy Programs; Chapter 3: Germany: “Wir Stehen Früher Auf” (We Wake Up Earlier); Chapter 4: Brazil: No More “Complexo de Vira-Lata” (Mongrel Complex); Chapter 5: Sophisticated Interdependence; Notes; Bibliography; IndexWhat People are Saying About This
“In this engaging and carefully researched book, Vivian E. Thomson offers a politically astute roadmap for reducing our dependency on fossil fuels. Even when tackling a global problem like climate change, national and local institutions are as relevant as ever.” —Paul F. Steinberg, Professor of Political Science and Environmental Policy, Malcolm Lewis Chair in Sustainability and Society, Harvey Mudd College