As it was, the Framework Convention on Climate Change—the agreement that came out of Rio—was remarkable. Not because of its targets, for it had none save the “aim” to reduce emissions in 2000 to 1990 levels, but because it existed at all. Four years earlier, climate change had not even been on the political agenda in the United States, nor on that of many other countries. Yet in less than half a decade, what heretofore had been an obscure scientific preoccupation had been turned into something that the international community had gone on record promulgating as an urgent and fundamental challenge to humanity and to the planet’s well-being.
The road to Rio was actually quite long; it had begun more than two centuries earlier, in the Swiss Alps. But what had started as an obsession by a handful of researchers with the past, with glaciers and the mysteries of the Ice Age, was now set to become a dominating energy issue for the future.
And:
On November 15, 1990, George H. W. Bush signed the Clean Air Amendments into law. Title IV established an emissions trading system to reduce acid rain. It was a great victory for something that had been considered beyond-the-pale just a year earlier. Shrinking the caps over time, that is, reducing the total number of allowances or permits year by year, would have the effect of making the permits scarcer and thus more expensive, increasing the incentive to reduce emissions. Many called this system allowance trading. Others, more optimistically, called it the “Grand Policy Experiment.”
After a slow start, the buying and selling of allowances became standard practice among utilities. The results in the years since have been very impressive. Emissions trading delivered much larger reductions, at much lower costs, and much more speedily, than what would have been anticipated with a regulatory system. By 2008, emissions had fallen from the 1980 level by almost 60 percent. As a bonus, the rapid reduction in emissions meant less lung disease and thus significant savings on health care.
The impact on thinking about how to solve environmental problems was enormous. “We are unaware of any other U.S. environmental program that has achieved this much,” concluded a group of MIT researchers, “and we find it impossible to believe that any feasible alternative command-and-control program could have done nearly as well.” Coase’s theorem worked; markets were vindicated. Within a decade, a market-based approach to pollution had gone from immorality and heresy to almost accepted wisdom. The experience would decisively shape the policy responses in the ensuing debate over how to deal with climate change. Overall, the evidence on SO2 was so powerful that it was invoked again and again in the struggles over climate change policy.
And:
What seemed to be the attitude of the Bush administration was captured at a ceremony at the State Department in May 2001, when Secretary of State Colin Powell swore in Paula Dobriansky as Undersecretary of State. Going through her list of responsibilities, he came to climate change. At that point, he paused, and with a small, almost embarrassed grin, laughed, and jokingly put his hand over his mouth as if he had said something slightly naughty.
And:
On April 2, 2007, the Supreme Court delivered its opinion in what has been called “the most important environmental ruling of all times.” In a split 5–4 decision, the Court declared that Massachusetts had standing to bring the suit because of the costly storms and the loss of coastal shore that would result from climate change and that the “risk of harm” to Massachusetts was “both actual and imminent.”
And in the heart of its opinion, the Court said that CO2—even though it was produced not only by burning hydrocarbons but by breathing animals—was indeed a pollutant that “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health and welfare.” And just to be sure not to leave any doubt as to how it felt, the majority added that the EPA’s current stance of nonregulation was “arbitrary” and “capricious” and “not in accordance with the law.”
The consequences were enormous; for it meant that if the U.S. Congress did not legislate regulation of carbon, the EPA had the authority—and requirement—to wield its regulatory machinery to achieve the same end by making an “endangerment finding.” Two out of three of the branches of the federal government were now determined that the government should move quickly to control CO2.
More (#5) from The Quest:
And:
And:
And: