state politics

Hey, that’s me!

Republicans for Environmental Protection have sponsored a TV ad on climate change to run in Austin this week. The goal is to drum up support for the several bills on climate change currently before the Texas Legislature.

Here it is:

There's also an article about the ad in the Austin-American Statesman here.

State emissions registry

When I interviewed Terry Tamminen about (among other things) California’s experience putting together a climate plan, he stressed the importance of putting together a comprehensive inventory of GHG sources: We had pretty good knowledge of emissions from the utilities sector, but it was poor in terms of the agriculture sector, the cement sector, etc. We […]

The RFFI way

The NYT has an update on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the Northeast coalition of states establishing their own carbon market. It’s promising that they seem to have learned the two key lessons of the European carbon market experience, which stumbled coming out of the gate. The first lesson: don’t give away credits. Participants […]

More exciting than it sounds

British Columbia has just joined Schwarzenegger’s Western Regional Climate Action Initiative, which is meant … … to identify, evaluate and implement ways to collectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the region and to achieve related co-benefits. The initiative requires partners to set an overall regional goal to reduce emissions, develop a market-based, multi-sector mechanism to […]

Learn how to recognize the shills

Yesterday I wrote about an energy conference in Utah at which Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer enthusiastically shilled for coal and demanded more federal money for it. Looking more closely at the conference, I see I shouldn’t have been surprised. The Salt Lake Tribune story from yesterday is all but a press release for Utah Gov. […]

Quit with the coal boosting already

Down in Salt Lake City, the National Governors Association is holding a three-day Energy Summit. Tired of federal slacking, the NGA has for the first time in its history drawn up a specific list of priorities for Congress to consider this session. Here’s what they said: At the top of the list – in fact, […]

In Washington state

Ooh, boy! It looks like the state of Washington is one step closer to having a sane climate policy. The state House of Representatives just passed a climate policy that looks like it's got some teeth:

An interview with California environmental adviser Terry Tamminen

Terry Tamminen is a compact, affable man. With his bluntness and lack of pretense, it’s easy to see why Arnold Schwarzenegger trusted him. The California governor brought Tamminen on as his environmental adviser in 2003, elevated him to secretary of the state EPA, and then appointed him a senior cabinet adviser in 2004. In part […]

A majority of states retain green-leaning guvs

A few more important results from gubernatorial races: