Here’s an encouraging thing: the Western Climate Initiative. It’s a consortium of nine western governments (Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, British Columbia and Manitoba) created for the purpose of regulating greenhouse gas emissions. The objective: by 2020, reduce emissions to 15% less than the 2005 level. The first actions are now being proposed, a cap-and-trade system for some industrial polluters.

Cap-and-trade is a popular approach to pollution control. It combines government regulation (the cap) with a free market mechanism (the trade). The government first measures carbon emissions for a targeted group of polluters. They then set an absolute limit for each. Hopefully this limit (the cap) is significantly less than today’s emissions. Anyone who pollutes under the cap may sell their unused emissions on a carbon market. The buyer would be another user who is unable to get under their cap.

There are other cap-and-trade markets in existence, but they are voluntary. It is up to each emitter to volunteer what they emit, and volunteer what they are willing to accept as a cap. Since money is involved, the temptation to cheat is very high. All I have to do is fudge a little on how much I think I might reduce. Some companies have been accused to selling carbon credits for projects that they were doing anyway (not for environmental reasons). The WCI system is not voluntary, so some of these problems may be avoided.

But the picture is not all rosy. To hold down complexity, the WCI proposal deals only with industrial emitters like power and cement plants. Major polluters like agriculture and transportation are not included. It’s hard to believe that transportation is not in the plan, since this is the #1 source for greenhouse gases by far. The reason given? “…the states are taking other steps to reduce emissions from cars and trucks, including mileage standards and a clean car initiative that the federal government has stymied so far.” In other words, nothing is being done at all, but since the states tried (and failed) that is good enough!

Cap-and-trade will not work for transportation — the complexities of dealing with millions of vehicles and owners is overwhelming. What might work are high gas taxes, or very high vehicle registration fees, or a moratorium on highway improvements, or all of these things. Raising the cost of driving, or lowering the convenience and comfort of driving, will lower the miles driven. This lowers greenhouse gas emissions directly. There are two reasons for the WCI fear of this approach: (1) poor people get disenfranchised; and (2) wealthier people get pissed off. They claim the concern is #1, but it would be easy to give poor people free transit passes, or even free gasoline, if we wanted to. But who could stand up to the 1,000-decibel whine from all those suburban drivers convinced that not only do they have a God-given right to drive a car, but that they have a right to drive a car cheaply? Not the WCI. At least not so far.

But let’s give the WCI credit. The issue is still being discussed, there are brave leaders, we may yet see real change.