states pump up Kyoto commitments

In a move that Democrats and Californians alike are no doubt grinning about, Gov. Schwarzenegger has broken ranks with the Republican majority in re: climate change. “I say the debate is over,” he says, and summarily convinced, Arnold put California leaps and bounds ahead of any other US state with its ambitious legislation aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. A scant review of this program’s ‘teeth’ is covered in the NYTimes article.

Happily, many states are falling under the auspices of the Kyoto protocol by mechanisms of their own design – with (obviously) no support or backing from the federal government. Actions include letigation and lawsuits against power plants (most famously last summer’s suit), to bolstering renewable energy (see UCS factsheet), to good, old-fashioned muckracking against the President (see angry formal letter), to simply adopting the Kyoto protocol on some respectable level. 44 case studes are available from the Pew Center’s database.

2 Responses to “states pump up Kyoto commitments”

  1. Liam says:

    I would be interested in seeing a graphic that shows which states/counties/cities which are doing this, and the GHG emissions.

    An added feature to such a map would be to see their voting preferences in the last federal election.

    Could probably be cooked up in Flash relatively easily.