September 2, 2006.
California is looking greener from all corners of the world. This photo is from "The Mail and Guardian."
Caption :: Blowin' in the wind: Turbines revolve on Friday outside San Diego, California. The wind farm produces about 50 megawatts of power to service about 30 000 customers around San Diego, and is the largest wind farm in the United States on Native American lands. (Sandy Huffaker, Getty Images, AFP
... from The New York Times
California, long a leader on environmental issues, has done it again, approving a pathbreaking bill that would impose the country’s broadest and most stringent controls on emissions of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas. California’s action stands in bold and welcome contrast to the federal government’s reluctance to take aggressive action on a problem of mounting concern among scientists and the general public.
The deal between the state’s Democratic leadership and its Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, would reduce California’s carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. This is by any measure a huge undertaking. It will be up to state agencies, chiefly the California Air Resources Board, to work out the details, but the plan allows for market-based mechanisms like emissions trading to achieve the maximum possible gains at the lowest cost.
Of the bill’s many architects, the most important were two Democratic members of the Assembly, Fabian Núñez and Fran Pavley. Ms. Pavley was also the author of another groundbreaking measure four years ago limiting carbon dioxide emissions from cars and light trucks. That measure, which Mr. Schwarzenegger also embraces, is now the subject of a lawsuit from the automobile companies and the Bush administration.
Taken together with other state actions — including an important agreement among several Northeastern states to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants — California’s assertiveness has suggested to some people that the country may be at a transformational moment on climate change, with the states leading a powerful “bottom-up” movement to deal with the problem.
That could well be so, but a global problem cannot be solved by state and regional initiatives, however admirable and necessary. There is no real substitute for determined action at the national level, since states that make the necessary capital investments to reduce emissions could well end up at a temporary economic disadvantage. Nor is there any substitute for American leadership globally; China and India, two big polluters and getting bigger, are unlikely to undertake costly controls while the world’s biggest polluter sits on its hands.
Given California’s size and economic reach, its initiative will surely help. But Congress and President Bush are by no means off the hook.
Kyoto Protocol
Article 3 1. The Parties included in Annex I shall, individually or jointly, ensure that their aggregate anthropogenic carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of the greenhouse gases listed in Annex A do not exceed their assigned amounts, calculated pursuant to their quantified emission limitation and reduction commitments inscribed in Annex B and in accordance with the provisions of this Article, with a view to reducing their overall emissions of such gases by at least 5 per cent below 1990 levels in the commitment period 2008 to 2012. 2. Each Party included in Annex I shall, by 2005, have made demonstrable progress in achieving its commitments under this Protocol.
http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.html
The global estimate of carbon dioxide emissions as of 1997 was 1 ton C per person. Of that average the USA and Canada contributed 18% to 20%. (click on title)
A Second Source of Information
"Trends of International Carbon Dioxide Emissions"
http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file32554.pdf
According to this research the USA contributed at least 22% of the emissions. Well on it's way to 25% of the planetary emissions of Carbon Dioxide.
