RGGI (pronounced ‘reggie’) is a regional agreement between ten northeastern states to manage and regulate greenhouse gas emissions with a system that requires fossil-burning utilities to buy permits for the carbon they release into the atmosphere.
Although demand for the allowances was relatively high at the online auction, with four times as many bids as the available supply allowed, the permits sold for less than what some expected. One study predicted a higher price would be set for the carbon permits at the RGGI auction, but most estimates did not anticipate the severity of the current financial crisis. [Read more]
California plans to host a meeting of several countries in November to discuss ways to limit greenhouse gas emissions
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office has invited China, India, European countries, Australia, Canada and Mexico to a meeting ahead of international climate talks the following month in Poland. Details still are being worked out.
There’s a theory in political science that uses a boomerang metaphor to describe what Schwarzenegger is doing. The boomerang effect goes something like this: A group within a country (e.g. a political organization, a political party, a business, a particular social movement, interest group, or in this case, a U.S. state) will reach out to an outside government to put political pressure back on the country in which it resides. In this case, California is reaching out to foreign countries to on capping greenhouse gases because the U.S. federal government refuses to do so. [Read more]
Today is the final day of the On Day One/Grist/Ecopolitology/UN Dispatch collaborative salon covering climate change ideas for the next president. We were fortunate to have the week’s final idea submitted by NASA physicist Dr. James Hansen, which you can watch below. For my written response, as well as those of Kate Sheppard, David Roberts, and Tony Kriendler, head on over to Grist.
The good news? The number of Senate skeptics is down from 77% in 2006
Do you want to know why Republican Senators voted last week to filibuster the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act? Put plainly - they just don’t buy it. Or, in the words of one Republic Senator: “This global-warming debate is a farce.”
Think Progress has gleaned an interesting nugget from the recent “congressional insiders poll” published in the National Journal. The poll included a question about whether the Senators believed in the anthropogenic causes of global warming. The question posed to 39 Republican and 39 Democrat Senators is as follows:
Q: Do you think it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made pollution?
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) held the first auction for carbon permits in North America and as previously reported, many deem it a success.
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