Category: CALIFORNIA_NEWS Econ_CarbonTax_CapNTrade_CN Health_MN Science_Air_CN

At a state Senate hearing on Wednesday, top regulators dismissed concerns about the ability of California’s cap and trade program to help the state meet its climate goals. The hearing focused on a recent report that found oil and gas companies and other polluters have pocketed so many permits through the program — in which companies buy and trade pollution allowances equal to how much they plan to emit — that there is hardly any incentive left for them to actually reduce their emissions.

When California lawmakers passed a 10-year extension of the state’s cap-and-trade program in 2017, it was celebrated as a crowning climate achievement. Four short years later, the program has become a political albatross. Environmental justice groups argue the program has failed to stem pollution in communities of color. It has also been dogged by critics who say its carbon offsets fail to deliver promised emission reductions. And the person charged with implementing the program, Mary Nichols, who until recently served as California’s top environmental regulator, was passed over by President Biden to lead EPA.

Climate change is an all-hands-on-deck crisis. The problem comes from many quarters of Spaceship Earth, and while many solutions can help solve it, none of them can do it alone. Vegan diets and paper straws alone won’t save the planet. We need high-impact, large-scale policy change to redirect our economy away from fossil fuels, synergize with other solutions, and catalyze the transition to a clean energy economy.

As more world leaders consider levying border taxes on climate-damaging goods, a new study looks at ways it can be done in countries—including the United States—that haven’t established a domestic market for carbon emissions.

The American Petroleum Institute, Washington’s biggest lobby for the oil-and-gas industry, spent decades leveraging its financial muscle to fight almost every green initiative in its path. Then in March, the group signaled an about-face. It released its “Climate Action Framework,” a set of new policy prescriptions to lower emissions and support cleaner fuels.

Massive wildfires in Oregon and Washington are torching more than vegetation. They’re also burning through a system used by states and businesses to fight climate change.

While President Biden has called climate change an existential threat, his proposals for addressing it remain modest relative to the enormity of the problem. In part, that’s because he’s taken off the table a carbon tax, the solution favored by many economists and climate experts. And one reason may be opposition from some in the environmental justice movement, which appears deeply divided over a carbon levy.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called on Friday for better international coordination on carbon-cutting policies to avoid trade frictions, days before the European Union is due to unveil a controversial carbon border tax.

Indonesia is proposing a carbon tax of about $5 per ton of emissions in a bid to raise state revenues and meet climate goals. That’s less than a tenth of the current price of carbon permits in the European Union’s Emissions Trading System. And yet it has faced criticism from industry that it will slow down economic growth.