In the News

Over the last two weeks in Cancún, some Latin American countries have shown openness to exploring private funding sources and market mechanisms to address climate change, while a small number of others have staked an ideological opposition to market-based climate solutions with little interest in compromise.

Outside the auspices of COP16, a number of developing countries like India and Chile are starting to consider using market mechanisms like carbon caps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. That climate action is taking place at all is good news at a conference that doesn’t appear to be headed towards a breakthrough. In the time remaining in Cancun, negotiations should try to deal with these budding programs.

While the climate change negotiations in Cancun are unlikely to result in a global cap on greenhouse gas emissions, forward motion is possible in many key areas. Among them, forest preservation is the brightest spot for progress in what has now become a very dreary policy forecast.

Clouds of pessimism hang over Cancun, largely due to the absence of a domestic climate law in the United States. Certainly, it makes it more difficult for the developed world to ask the developing countries, like India or China, to move towards binding carbon reductions. But success is possible on smaller-bore issues that that require immediate attention, are relatively easier to address, and will have a major impact.

Currently our nation’s nascent alternative energy industry is being buoyed by a system of tax credits and energy grants that are set to expire at the end of the year. Absent a price on carbon, these incentives are needed to keep the new market’s pulse from stopping. It may be that extending these credits will be all the support for alternative energy that will come from a federal government heading for gridlock, but we should not fool ourselves into thinking we have done enough, or done the right thing.

News of Lisa Heinzerling’s departure from her position as head of the EPA’s Office of Policy and Planning doesn’t need to mean the winding-down of aggressive action at the EPA.

When the Clean Air Act was passed, forty years ago this week, climate change was a theory. Since then, the scientific community has reached a consensus about the greenhouse effects of carbon pollution. We are now aware that these gases pose a serious threat to the environment and economy and therefore, must be regulated under the law.

“They are mainly some broad-based recommendations,” said Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. In some areas, such policies may already be in place, he said. “There is probably an aspirational aspect to this, but there is a lot of heterogeneity in countries and within countries in terms of local institutes and so on. It’s heavily dependent on the region,” he said.

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall in southeastern Louisiana on August 29, 2005, it caused extreme flooding up and down the Gulf coastline. Four years later, the Gulf has made a dramatic recovery—thanks in part to the billions of dollars in aid sent via the national flood insurance program. The hurricane certainly underscored the need for federal aid in the event of a natural disaster. But was the federal flood insurance program the best way to get aid to those in need?

Scott Holladay, an economics fellow who works on climate issues for the Institute for Policy Integrity, said in the future, that could change. “We expect technology to develop so cellulosic ethanol would become a practical fuel source, and we think that the renewable fuel standards will help that to happen and encourage that type of technology development,” he said.