The Biden administration should look to states as a laboratory for innovative climate action.
Read the full Risky Climate column at Bloomberg Green.
All climate policy eyes are on Washington, D.C., these days and for good reason. The fact that President-elect Joe Biden puts climate change among his top four priorities promises significant progress at the federal level, with or without the Senate. But don’t forget states as a crucial driver of climate progress.
During the four years of the Trump administration, states have served as a backstop, while federal climate action has been backsliding. Yet states’ roles go well beyond that. They often serve as a laboratory for new ideas as well as a conduit by which federal agencies make progress.
California is typically held up as the state with the most progressive climate agenda. It is, but it is hardly alone. Per the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, 23 states plus the District of Columbia have their own greenhouse-gas reduction targets. States as diverse as New York, Montana, and Louisiana have net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions targets by midcentury. Ten Northeastern states have a power-sector emissions trading system that caps their emissions and establishes a price per metric ton of CO₂, albeit a low one. Virginia is poised to join in 2021 as the eleventh, while California has its economy-wide system plus additional ambitious sector-specific policies.
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