All eyes on Calif. climate-change fight
By John Ritter, USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO — Make big-rig trucks more aerodynamic. Allow docked ships to shut off engines and plug into electrical outlets. Require oil-change technicians to check tire pressure.
Those measures and six more that California regulators will consider this month are among early actions in what will be a long, fiercely debated and politically perilous battle against global warming.
Sleeker trucks, ships that don't idle in port and proper tire inflation don't seem earthshaking, but each would be a small step toward reaching California's ambitious goal — spelled out in its landmark 2006 law — of producing fewer greenhouse gases, which most scientists believe cause the planet to warm.
California, whose economy is larger than Canada's, is the only state that has ordered mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases. With no federal action yet on climate change, the process here is being closely watched across the country and worldwide.
California will pioneer many solutions to cutting greenhouse gases, says James Sweeney, director of Stanford University's Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency. "The significance of what California is doing is we're helping the whole United States at least figure out how to move forward," he says.
Even here, climate change can be divisive. A bill to push cities and counties to plan development that encourages less driving passed the California Senate this year but stalled in the Assembly.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature disagree on how to solve expected water shortages caused by global warming. The governor wants to spend billions of dollars on new dams to store water, but the Legislature is urging less energy-intensive measures.
Working out the details
Carrying out California's climate-change law is the Air Resources Board (ARB), a powerful agency that approved the nation's first motor vehicle emission standards in the 1960s and was the first to phase out lead in gasoline.
The law says California must slash greenhouse gases 25% by 2020. This month's nine proposed rules, plus three others approved in June, could achieve 10% of the target, the ARB says.
Working out specifics and putting into effect rules that include requiring cleaner fuels, landfills and auto air conditioners will take more than a year.
And that's just the start.
The ARB won't finish a detailed plan of how the 2020 goal is to be achieved until the end of next year. Then the stage will be set for what are likely to be the most fought-over rules aimed at power plants, cement manufacturers, refineries and other big producers of greenhouse gases.
"The board's been criticized for not acting fast enough, but I'd rather see quality than speed," Sweeney says. "To do this poorly would signal to the rest of the nation that you can't do it right. That would harm the movement forward."
Industries that will bear costs of cutting greenhouse gases likely will try to water down the regulations, fearing a competitive disadvantage to out-of-state companies.
"I think industry will start dragging its feet more and more as these rules get closer to reality," says Bill Magavern, senior representative for Sierra Club California.
The California Chamber of Commerce lobbied against the law last year but now is committed to the 2020 goal as long as the state's economy stays healthy, Vice President Dominic DiMare says.
"Right now, we don't oppose any of the proposals out there," he says. "That could change."
Political debate has scarcely begun on how to design another potentially large long-term emissions savings: a carbon tax or market-based "cap and trade" system.
Carbon dioxide and other carbon-based gases are the leading causes of greenhouse gases. Under cap and trade, the ARB would set emissions limits, or caps, and allow companies who can't meet them to buy credits from those that can. The cap would gradually be lowered to force greater and greater emissions reductions.
California's climate-change initiatives go beyond the state law and are already being felt nationally. Two years ago, the ARB ordered cuts in auto emissions, source of 40% of greenhouse gases. The state sought permission from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to enforce its stricter state rule. Thirteen other states have passed similar measures.
The EPA hasn't ruled on the ARB's request, even though the Supreme Court said in April that the agency has the power to regulate greenhouse gases as air pollutants.
Options not always black and white
In the legislative battle over the state law, supporters argued that a crackdown on greenhouse gases would stimulate new technologies and make California a global center of clean, efficient energy.
"We think they overstated the virtues of climate-change regulation and the business that would follow it," DiMare says. "It wasn't supported by strong evidence."
Others disagree. "The more we get serious about this, the more we'll start to build better technologies and then start selling them," says Dan Kammen, a University of California, Berkeley energy professor. "There's a huge global market now for clean technology."
So far, the ARB has plucked "low-hanging fruit," ARB spokesman Leo Kay says, a reference to measures seen as less burdensome and costly than those to come later. Affected industries beg to differ.
Complying with the cleaner-fuel standard will be tough for the oil and refining sector, says Cathy Reheis-Boyd, a Western States Petroleum Association executive. Solutions that have gotten a lot of attention, such as blending corn-based ethanol with gasoline, may not pass ARB muster, she says.
The ARB will require accounting for greenhouse gases from a fuel's entire "life cycle": emissions from fertilizer in the cornfield, the tractor harvesting the corn and transportation to a refinery.
"It's not as simple as everything with a 'B' in front of it for biodiesel is good, and everything with an 'E' in front of it for ethanol is good," Reheis-Boyd says. "You could choose something that makes climate change worse if you're not careful."
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