Climate Bill Could Override Regional Efforts

Tucked deep into Tuesday’s hefty climate bill draft is an innocuous-sounding sentence: ‘‘Notwithstanding section 116, no State or political subdivision thereof shall implement or enforce a cap that covers any capped emissions emitted during the years 2012 through 2017.” That sentence could potentially spell the end of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the cap-and-trade scheme engineered by 10 Northeastern states to cut global warming emissions. Essentially, what it means is that a federal scheme to cap carbon dioxide emissions, and allow companies to trade the allowances to pollute, would pre-empt similar schemes by the states. The regional initiative in the Northeast, which governs power plants, is the only mandatory scheme up and running, but California and other Western states are contemplating a cap-and-trade program of their own...NY Times