A version of this article originally appeared on Sightline Daily.

There are at present six proposals to export coal from Northwest ports. If all of these proposals are built, and if all of them operate at full capacity, the Northwest would be shipping 145 million tons of per coal year.

When burned, that coal will produce roughly 262 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. It’s such a staggering figure that it’s a little hard to grasp. So here’s some context:

The coal export proposals are, in other words, a disaster for the climate. In aggregate, they are actually far worse than the Keystone XL pipeline.

If you want to dig into the numbers on a project-by-project basis, here they are:

• Cherry Point, Wash. SSA Marine is planning to build and operate the Gateway Pacific Terminal, a new shipping facility north of Bellingham, Wash., that would be capable of handling 48 million tons of coal per year. Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private sector coal company, has already agreed to supply 24 million tons of coal.

• Longview, Wash. Millennium Bulk Terminals, a subsidiary of the Australian coal mining company Ambre Energy, purchased a port site on the Columbia River. Arch Coal, a major American coal mining company, has a 38 percent stake in the site. Ambre hopes to export 44 million tons of coal, with 25 million tons in the first phase.

• Grays Harbor, Wash. According to newspaper accounts, RailAmerica is planning to develop a coal export terminal at the Port of Grays Harbor’s Marine Terminal 3 that could handle 5 million tons of coal each year.

• Port of St. Helens, Ore. Kinder Morgan is planning to build and operate a coal export terminal at the Port Westward Industrial Park near Clatskanie, Ore., that will be capable of handling 30 million tons of coal per year, with 15 million tons in an initial phase of development.

• Port of Morrow, Ore. Ambre Energy is planning to construct a facility on the Columbia River in eastern Oregon that will transfer coal from rail to barges that will be towed downriver to Port Westward, where the coal will be loaded on ongoing vessels. The company says that the system will be capable of handling 8 million tons per year.

• Coos Bay, Ore. The Port of Coos Bay is considering a mysterious proposal, known to the public only as “Project Mainstay,” that officials say could export 6 to 10 million tons of coal per year.

Notes: My calculations assume that Powder River Basin coal generates 8,500 British thermal units (BTUs) per pound, and that 1 million BTUs produce 212.7 pounds of CO2. Gasoline consumption refers to “motor gasoline” and comes the U.S. Federal Highway Administration’s statistics, which assume 19.6 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon of gasoline.

In the course of looking into some larger questions about the global coal trade, I stumbled upon several fascinating pictures of world coal production and consumption during the last three decades. Here’s what global coal “production” (i.e. mining) looked like in 2010:

I wasn’t able to embed the animated image, but you can watch 30 years of coal production play out here.

Now here’s a closer look at trends within Asia, the world’s dominant coal producer:

Watch the animated version here.

That’s the production side. The other side of the coin, of course, is coal consumption. So, let’s take a look at 30 years of international coal consumption:

Animated version here.

Global coal consumption has roughly doubled since 1980, with China’s increase in coal consumption exploding fivefold in those 30 years. By contrast, coal consumption in Europe and the former Soviet Union actually declined over the period, and while North American consumption is up from 1980 levels, it’s begun a moderate decline in recent years.

Now, here’s a closer look at coal consumption in Asia, which is easily the biggest coal consuming region in the world:

Animated version here.

What are the takeaway lessons here?

It’s noteable that some of the world’s major producers, like Australia and Indonesia, actually consume very little coal relative to other countries. By contrast, other major coal producers like China and North America consume roughly the same amount that they produce.

It’s also worth contrasting the two pictures of coal in Asia. Note that several major coal consuming nations, like Japan and South Korea, produce virtually no coal.

Yet the most important lesson, I think, is that consumption trends in Asia, and particularly China, are in the driver’s seat of world coal trends. It’s not surprising that Chinese coal markets and Chinese energy policy are the subject of much attention by coal companies and public interest advocates alike.

Here are three pictures that help explain why American railways seem to be supporting coal export proposals in the Northwest. It’s because railways are very closely connected to the coal industry. Consider:

Coal so dwarfs every other rail-hauled commodity that it is almost as important as all the other commodities combined. (Note: This picture excludes “intermodal” freight.)

But while coal is a huge component of rail freight, it declined noticeably in 2009 and 2010:

Presumably, a good deal of the recent decline is related to a lousy economy and the attendant reduction in demand for electrical power and industrial uses of coal. Yet the recently depressed coal rail volumes are not entirely driven by the economic downtown. In fact, coal fired-power is on a long-term downward trajectory:

Going forward, that downward trend is likely to continue, and perhaps accelerate. Regulators are tightening pollution standards; other power sources like natural gas and renewable energy are becoming increasingly competitive in the marketplace; and communities across the country are averse to coal-fired power for its deleterious health effects.

Power plants are not the only customers that railways service with coal shipments, but they easily constitute the lion’s share. So given the ongoing decline (and dismal future prospects) for domestic coal use, it’s no wonder that railway companies support big new coal export facilities. As Americans are increasingly uninterested in buying coal, railways will want to find consumers — no matter how far afield they may be — who will pay coal to be moved by rail, whether it’s to a power plant or an export terminal.

Notes: I created the first chart using data from the table on page 8 of the American Association of Railroad’s “Rail Time Indicators” report for Jan. 2011. (The AAR data does not combine commodity carload data with figures for intermodal freight, which amounted to 11.3 million trailers and containers in 2010.) The second chart comes directly from page 13 of that same report. The third chart is taken from the most recent rail indicators report [PDF], which was published in Dec. 2011.

This post originally appeared on Sightline Daily.

The planned Keystone XL oil pipeline has earned major national attention for the damage it would do to the climate. At the same time, another climate drama is playing out with much less attention as coal companies make plans to export huge quantities to Asia by way of Pacific Northwest ports. It’s pretty clear that both projects are environmental horror stories, but I’ve been wondering: Which one is worse?

So, from the King Kong versus Godzilla files, here’s my analysis of their carbon impacts.

The result surprised me: Coal exports look to be an even bigger climate disaster than the pipeline. There are, in fact, quite a bit more direct emissions from burning the coal than from the oil. That’s true even when one counts the energy-intensive tar-sands extraction and processing — and, of course, there are plenty of upstream emissions associated with coal mining that I’ve left out of the equation here. (In order to make a roughly direct comparison, I also omitted emissions associated with both products’ mining, refining, transportation, and so forth.) Clearly we can ill afford either one of these projects, but until we have a clear energy policy that respects climate science we’ll be wrestling with these kind of killer projects one at a time.

Now, for all the energy and math geeks out there, here’s the methodology I used to generate these numbers.

To calculate the carbon-dioxide emissions from coal exports, I assumed that 110 million tons of Powder River Basin coal are exported each year. That’s consistent with the 50 million tons planned for Cherry Point, Wash., and 60 million tons planned for Longview, Wash. (It’s a figure that may actually understate the actual volume of exports because the Longview project sponsors have already been caught out using an 80 million ton figure, and there are nascent or rumored coal export plans that I didn’t account for in places like Grays Harbor, Wash.; St. Helens, Ore.; and Coos Bay, Ore.) I further assumed that Powder River Basin coal generates 8,500 BTUs per pound, and that 1 million BTUs would produce 212.7 pounds of CO2, consistent with U.S. Department of Energy figures. Do all the algebra, and you arrive at 199 million tons of CO2 per year in “direct” emissions from the coal exports.

My coal emissions accounting leaves out a lot. I did not count the emissions associated with mining, processing, rail shipping, storing, maritime shipping, constructing new port or rail facilities, or any other related activities. I also didn’t count any non-CO2 or fugitive emissions. All I counted, in short, was the CO2 that will be directly released by burning the coal.

To calculate the CO2 emissions from the Keystone XL pipeline, I assumed that the pipeline moves 830,000 barrels of oil per day, which is what the U.S. State Department says, and which works out to about 303 million barrels per year. I then assumed that each barrel of oil contains 0.43 metric tons of C02, which is what the U.S. EPA assigns for an “average” barrel of oil. That all works out to just shy of 144 million short tons of CO2 per year for direct emissions from burning the oil.

The pipeline will not be moving “average” oil, of course, but rather tar-sands oil, which is especially dirty and carbon intensive. Keep in mind, however, that “tailpipe” or direct emissions for the refined products that come from the oil — gasoline, diesel, kerosene, etc. — are basically the same no matter what the original feedstock is. In other words, every gallon of gasoline you burn in your car produces pretty much the same amount of CO2 whether it originally came from Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Coast, or the Canadian oil sands.

The difference is that it takes a lot more energy, and therefore carbon, to extract and process tar-sands oil. So to account for the special nastiness of tar-sands oil, I factored in the emissions that are associated with “producing” or extracting it. Using figures from David Strahan, Wikipedia, and other sources, I assumed that extracting the oil and “upgrading” to make it suitable for refining results in somewhere around 18 to 26 percent more carbon emissions than the direct emissions from burning the fuel itself. (The exact amount depends on the local characteristics of the oil deposit as well as the technology deployed and other factors.) I took the mid-point of that range, 21.7 percent, and added 31 million tons of CO2 per year for the pipeline oil.

To maintain a roughly apples-to-apples comparison with my coal emissions calculation, I didn’t factor in emissions from shipping, refining, distributing, constructing the pipeline, or any other related activities. And again, I didn’t count any non-CO2 or fugitive emissions. All I counted, in short, was the CO2 that will be directly released by burning the oil plus the emissions required to extract and process the oil from the tar-sands deposits.

Comments and suggestions (and corrections) are of course very welcome. Thanks to Jessie Dye at Earth Ministry who prompted me to do this analysis.

A young coal worker in Linfen, Shanxi, China.Photo: Andi808

Cross-posted from Sightline Daily.

One of the nation’s most respected resource economists, Dr. Thomas M. Power, just released a new white paper [PDF] showing that coal exports to China will increase that country’s coal burning and pollution, and decrease investments in energy efficiency.

In a nutshell, Power demonstrates that the planned coal export facilities in the Northwest would add to the supply of coal to China, thereby pushing down the cost of burning it. And because China is highly cost sensitive, even relatively small changes in price could result in significant changes in coal burning. Furthermore, low coal prices in the near term will encourage long term investments in new coal burning facilities that would lock in decades of further demand for coal.

Power’s report provides a direct and evidence-based refutation to coal industry claims that U.S. exports make no difference to foreign coal consumers. The industry’s argument, of course, flies in the face of basic economic principles, not to mention the specific characteristics of China’s energy economy. Now, policymakers have an independent examination of the ways that the export facilities planned for the Northwest will make a difference for China’s pollution, and even for global climate stability.  

The report is 29 pages, but those pressed for time will find a two-page executive summary at the beginning.

This post original appeared on Sightline’s Daily Score blog.

If you’re reading this, then the phrase “interesting demographic data” probably doesn’t sound like an oxymoron to you. That’s a good thing, because you’ll find a heap of it in a new analytical report out on bicycling. Among other things, we get a clearer view of the race and income components of U.S. bicycling.

Here’s a look at bike trips broken out by racial and ethnic categories:

Two big things stand out here for me: 1) white people remain somewhat overrepresented; but 2) bicycling appears to be trending toward racial parity. As of 2009, roughly 21 percent of all bike trips in the U.S. were made by people of color, and it looks as though U.S. cyclists may soon look pretty darn similar to the nation as a whole. 

Now, here’s a look at bike trips broken out by income categories.

If you divide up Americans by income into four equally sized categories (“quartiles” in the business), this is how they represent among bike trips:

Surprised? Contrary to popular convention, the biggest share of bicyclists isn’t yuppies, it’s low income people. In fact, the lowest-earning quarter of Americans make nearly one-third of all bike trips. Among that group, I would expect to find at least some fraction of working poor, students, the unemployed, and retired people of modest means. No doubt there are almost as many reasons to bike as there are cyclists, but it’s clear that bikes are a favored choice among those on a budget.

Photo: Sam JavanrouhThe big takeaway for me, however, is looking beyond low-income riders. Bicycling is remarkably evenly distributed among the remaining three quartiles. With the exception of the overrepresented bottom quartile, bike trips don’t appear to be the province of any one income class more than any other.

Notes: I created these charts using the data from Table 3 on page five of “Analysis of Bicycling Trends and Policies in Large North American Cities,” published by the University Transportation Research Center, authored by John Pucher at Rutgers and Ralph Bueler at Virginia Tech. Bike trips by income refer to 2009. “Share of population” uses the percentage reported by the American Community Survey’s 2005-2009 averages, and does not include multiracial figures.

Editor’s note: we replaced the top chart that originally appeared in this piece with a corrected version.

This post originally appeared at Sightline’s Daily Score blog.

I’m not big on parroting press releases, but I’m going to make an exception for Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the Northeast’s carbon cap-and-trade program. RGGI is quietly demonstrating that carbon markets can work wonderfully. So it’s too bad no one seems to be paying attention any longer.

Last week, RGGI’s most recent auction netted $83 million, for a lifetime total of nearly $861 million. The vast majority of that money is channeled into energy efficiency and job creation with immediate and tangible results.

For example:

Maine is investing a portion of its RGGI proceeds to implement large-scale energy efficiency projects in commercial and industrial facilities …  the project will enable the Dixfield sawmill to produce 25 percent of its electricity on site, saving enough money to sustain 235 jobs. Moose River Lumber anticipates adding at least three jobs while retaining the 66 full-time and 5 part-time workers currently employed.

Maryland is investing RGGI proceeds to help the state’s farmers control their energy budgets … The program … will save the farmers a collective total of more than $15 million in energy costs over the lifetime of the projects.

In New York, RGGI proceeds are a catalyst, leveraging federal, state and private investments to revitalize local economies. For example, the Village of Patchogue on Long Island used $27,000 in RGGI proceeds to identify energy efficiency opportunities as part of a proposal to upgrade its waste water treatment plant. This analysis made Patchogue eligible for $11.4 million in federal and state funds, which it received for its proposed upgrade. [Emphasis added.]

There’s much more in a new report “Investment of Proceeds from RGGI CO2 Allowances,” [PDF] which thoroughly documents the program’s investments. It’s encouraging stuff. Or it would be, if there was any serious conversation afoot to expand RGGI geographically or sectorally.

Some critics accuse RGGI of falling short because its allowance prices are low — just $1.89 for a ton of CO2 as of last week’s auction. There’s a fair, if limited, point to make on that score. It’s true that RGGI’s carbon budget is presently generous enough that during this recessionary period it’s not creating a meaningful reduction of carbon emissions beyond what would have happened anyway.

But it’s also worth remembering two things. First, one of the virtues of market pricing for carbon is that the price eases off when times are tough, just as it ratchets up when demand for carbon is high. That’s a smart feature for the climate and the economy. Second, even with carbon prices so low that they’re virtually undetectable, the Northeast states — and their residents and businesses — are reaping important dividends in job growth and energy cost savings by investing in efficiency. That’s a win no matter how you slice it.

Cross-posted from Sightline’s Daily Score blog.

Europe’s Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) cap-and-trade system has taken a somewhat undeserved drubbing in the press. Overall, it has functioned reliably and reasonably efficiently. Most of the alleged “Carbon Fraud!” you hear about in some quarters was really just easily fixable design flaws (like an initial over-allocation of allowances); tax payment scams that were wholly unrelated to the integrity of the carbon-reduction program (like the recent value-added tax scam); or a lousy offset program that is a potentially serious flaw, but that is also fixable as well as a threat to any carbon reduction plan. 

But the latest revelation — what appears to be wholesale theft of carbon credits from some European registries — is another animal. It is, indeed, worrisome, and it points to some of the more structural flaws in Europe’s trading system. The biggest problems are that the ETS system is overly sprawling, maintaining dozens of national registries of carbon credits that lack sufficiently clear central oversight. And the markets themselves permit an array of trading activities that seem to allow rouge traders to dupe other market participants.     

The good news is that virtually all of these problems are fixable (though news accounts suggest that European regulators are not moving toward reform terribly fast). Plus, while the alleged theft is certainly a black eye for the ETS, it’s hardly a refutation to the program, which really has accomplished most of its objectives.

The better news is that absolutely none of these problems need to occur in North American carbon markets. In fact, just last month a new analysis of American carbon markets conducted by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, together with a number of other federal agencies (USDA, Treasury, SEC, EPA, FERC, FTC, and EIA), documented how a well-regulated trading program could be executed domestically. (If you’re a carbon market geek, the full 50 page report is well worth reading; it’s the single best coverage of the topic I’ve seen.) Given clear regulatory oversight, a carbon trading market needs to be no riskier or more controversial than any other kind of regulated commodity trading, whether soybeans or wheat or whathaveyou.

It’s really not pie-in-the-sky to think that carbon markets, or other types of cap-and-trade markets for that matter, are not inherently risky endeavors. One reason we know this is because we already have them domestically — and they have a sterling track record. The northeast’s carbon market, RGGI, has been operating for several years without a hitch. And other cap-and-trade markets have been operating for decades in the U.S. with no evidence of fraud or manipulation. The key is good oversight, regulation, and transparency — the very traits that conventional U.S. commodities markets so exemplify. 

Back in October, I started noticing the accusation that Seattle is waging a “war on cars” was popping up an awful lot in the local press, and in suspicious ways.

On its face, the charge that Seattle is waging a war on cars is pretty silly. After all, that the bulk of the city’s political leaders support two car-centric megaprojects — the 520 bridge and the Alaskan Way tunnel — that will cost in the range of $7 billion, depending on how you do the counting. And the evidence marshaled in support of the “war on cars” idea was pretty thin gruel — adding a few bike lanes here and there, and raising on-street parking rates in the downtown core. 

So I did some poking around to find out where the “war on cars” language came from. And there is something fishy – or at least fishy-smelling – about it. You could be forgiven for thinking that it’s a local example of a manufactured right-wing talking point.

Here’s the history as I was able to trace it.

The phrase “war on cars” has been around for a while. See this 1998 Slate dialogue for example, or this Wall Street Journal editorial from 2005. During the aughts, the phrase was trotted out periodically in objection to congestion pricing, particularly in London. (See, for example, this 2002 piece in The Economist, this 2004 article in the London Evening Standard, or this Chicago Tribune piece circa 2007.)

But a review of Google’s news archives shows that, until 2009, the phrase was used infrequently. And even today, the phrase is seldom used outside of just two locations: Toronto and Seattle. 

In the spring of 2009, a few months after officials in Toronto rolled out “The Big Move” — a 25-year, multibillion dollar transportation plan that aimed at reducing per capita driving, reducing congestion, and increasing transit use – the meme rocketed into prominence. On May 17, 2009, the Toronto Sun, a populist conservative tabloid-style paper, fired what appears to have been the opening salvo, with a lengthy article called “Toronto’s War On Cars.” Five days later, the staid Toronto Star, Canada’s highest-circulation daily newspaper, ran an editorial by Denzil Minnan-Wong, a city councilor with a decidedly pro-car perspective. He wrote: “The city’s undeclared but very active war on cars is really a war on people … “

The phrase ricocheted around the Toronto media through most of the rest of the year, with conservative media outlets leading the charge and local officials denying that any such war even existed. On May 25, the phrase appeared in the mainstream press again, this time in the first sentence of an editorial at the Sun written by a bicycle advocate playing defense. Also playing defense was then-Mayor David Miller, whose performance at a press conference earned him the May 28 headline “No ‘War On The Car,’ Toronto’s Mayor Insists” in the right-of-center National Post. Just a few days later, on June 4, Toronto Star editorial writer Bob Hepburn weighed in with a heated column under the banner “Time To Stop the Nutty War On Cars.” And in September of 2009, on the occasion of a proposal to reduce speed limits in the city, the Sun followed up with an article called “War On Cars Continues.”

It was about this time that the “war on cars” meme began to percolate in earnest in Seattle (though it had been used used occasionally before). In June 2009, Seattle’s pro-road activist Elizabeth Campbell was quoted in the online Seattle PostGlobe saying, “I think there’s a war on cars and I don’t support it,” in reference to a mayoral candidate forum. Later that summer, in a humorous city council candidate forum, the candidates were asked whether they supported “the war on cars.” (It seems that all of them answered “yes.”)

By the autumn of 2009, however, things had quieted down, with no major mentions in either Toronto or Seattle. The sole exception to the calm was a January 2010 anti-Obama hit piece titled, “The War Against Suburbia,” written by Joel Kotkin and published by the conservative American Enterprise Institute. It ruffled the blogosphere briefly and then died away.

But by the spring of 2010, with Toronto’s mayoral election on the horizon, the phrase began to re-emerge. For example, on April 15, Bob Hepburn’s editorial for the Star kicked off with, “Bikes, cars and people — the war heats up in Toronto.” And on June 8, mayoral candidate Giorgio Mammoliti was quoted in the Star using the phrase.

Soon afterward, the ”war on cars” language really caught fire, thanks in part to the right-wing Heritage Foundation. On June 17, writing for Heritage, Wendell Cox criticized Transportation Secretary Roy LaHood in an article called “Washington’s War On Cars and the Suburbs,” which circulated widely. (Interestingly, Cox had tried on this language with Heritage as early as 2004, when he attacked the EPA‘s “war against cars and suburbs.”) Cox is a prominent player in the organized and well-
funded anti-smart growth movement. He is affiliated not only with Heritage, but also with the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute, and more than a dozen other conservative think tanks, including two in Canada and one in Washington state. He is uniquely well placed to push out talking points into right-leaning media.

Two months later, in August, car blogger Ronnie Schreiber (who boasts affiliations with right-wing media productions like Pajamas Media) began a popular series called “The War On Cars” at the automotive site Left Lane, in which he attacked LaHood, Seattle, and Toronto — in that order.

By the next month, September, Toronto’s front-running mayoral candidate Rob Ford had made “ending the war on cars” a centerpiece of his campaign when he released a YouTube version of his transportation plan. The “war on cars” phrase was repeated prominently in coverage by CBC and the Star, while the Sun‘s reporting was headlined, “Ford Declares War On The Streetcar” and the National Post trumpeted “Ford’s Plan Aims To Stop ‘War On Cars.’” (Ford went on to win Toronto’s mayoral election.)

The September explosion of the meme in Toronto seemed to spark imitators in Seattle. 

On Sept. 29, almost as if on cue, conservative blogger Stefan Sharkansky wrote a short post about Seattle’s new mayor called “Mike McGinn’s War On Cars,” and dyspeptic radio host Ken Schram aired a segment about “the war on cars.” (Sound Politics had actually used similar language as early as 2006, when a blogger attacked the previous mayor, Greg Nickels, for a “war against cars.”) The next day, Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Joel Connelly leveled the same accusation with the same words.

By mid-October, Fox News had jumped into the fray. Seattle-based reporter Dan Springer led the charge with the language, generating both local and national versions of the same story, ”Seattle’s War On Cars,” on Oct. 13. A couple of days after the Fox segments aired, Ross Reynolds, a host on Seattle’s NPR affiliate, KUOW, held an on-air debate about whether “Mayor Mike McGinn’s proposed increase of parking fees amounts to a war on cars.” Not to be outdone, KING 5 (the local NBC TV affiliate) ran an Oct. 19 segment called “Is There A War On Cars In Seattle?“ On Oct. 20, Publicola journalist Erica C. Barnett, who was featured in both the KOMO and KUOW radio segments, pushed back against the “war on cars” meme. By Oct. 28, the “war on cars” was considered commonplace enough that it was used without attribution in the Seattle Times (” … a backlash from drivers and freight advocates who perceive a “war on cars” being waged…”).

So that’s the origin of Seattle’s “war on cars” tempest in a teapot: it was a low-level meme that circulated for a decade or so; bubbled up in Toronto; was picked up by a few right-leaning national pundits in the U.S.; and was then parroted by the Seattle-area noise machine.

Oddly enough, I have a bit role in the drama. As late as November 2010, the Washington Policy Center, a Seattle-based conservative think tank, was still trying to fan the flames. In a critique of proposed parking policies on Nov. 15, Michael Ennis referred to “Mayor Mike McGinn’ war on cars [sic].” And then again, on Nov. 18, he wrote, ”Mayor McGinn and Eric de Place don’t want to increase parking supply because of their war on cars … “

Yes, that’s me being named as an enemy combatant in the “war on cars.” Which is odd, considering that I own — and even drive – a car. 

As it turns out, my casus belli against cars was advocating market pricing for vehicle storage. It’s not exactly the stuff of armed revolution. Which is why I think this whole thing is so phony.

There’s something almost laughably overheated about the “war on cars” rhetoric. It’s almost as if the purveyors of the phrase have either lost their cool entirely, or else they’re trying desperately to avoid a level-headed discussion of transportation policy.

I know everyone is supposed to be dour and disheartened about the prospects for climate policy right now. And while I can’t say that I’m thrilled with where we are, it’s useful to take stock of what’s happening because it’s not insignificant:

California: Next week, regulators are expected to approve a cap-and-trade program for the Golden State. It should be a slam dunk given that Proposition 23 — the oil company funded gutting of the state’s climate laws — got hammered at the ballot box. And now, new poll results from the Field Research Corp show that fully 64 percent of the California’s registered voters support cap-and-trade.

British Columbia: Provincial authorities are moving full speed ahead with a B.C. cap-and-trade program that will become operational on Jan. 1, 2012. The province will blend that program with the existing carbon tax, setting the state for B.C. to become the world leader in smart, comprehensive carbon pricing. (Matt Horne at the Pembina Institute has out a new thoughtful set of recommendations for the province’s carbon programs.)

New Mexico: Earlier this week, the state’s Environmental Improvement Board voted four-to-one in support of a carbon cap-and-trade program that will reduce state emissions by three percent annually from 2013 to 2020. That vote was a follow-up and backstop to a vote taken on election day that authorized New Mexico to join the Western Climate Initiative.

Western Climate Initiative: Despite setbacks in some key states like Oregon and Washington, the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) is plugging along. That’s thanks in large part to leadership in California, British Columbia, and New Mexico. Other WCI partners are also moving foward, including Manitoba (the province is seeking public consultation now on plans to implement a cap-and-trade program), as well as Ontario and Quebec.

Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative: The 10-state regional program in the Northeast continues to operate an efficient and inexpensive carbon cap-and-trade program on the power sector that generates much-needed revenue for energy efficiency and weatherization (and, in a few cases, state budget shortfalls). Now that RGGI has proved carbon cap-and-trade works well, the next step is to begin ratcheting down the cap faster.

In the Northwest, however, the states that pride themselves on environmental leadership are still sitting on their hands. Washington’s leaders appear to be showing no interest in seeking legislative authority to join WCI’s cap-and-trade program. It’s the same story in Oregon, where returning Gov. John Kitzhaber (D) has a real opportunity to make a bipartisan case for moving the state forward. If Oregon moves, that would make Washington the sole West Coast laggard, which might well be enough to prompt further action in the Evergreen State.

It would be better for all — for industry, the public, and the climate — if North America had a single, coherent, and comprehensive carbon program. But even without a common climate currency, there’s every reason to believe that a patchwork of state and regional programs can make a real difference. And perhaps most importantly, local leadership exerts political force on the national leaders in Ottawa and D.C. who have so far shirked their responsibilities.

This post originally appeared at Sightline’s Daily Score blog.