Inhale, exhale, pass the bill

GOV. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER and California legislators are in down-to-the-wire negotiations over a bill that would make California a leader in reducing one of the main greenhouse gases behind global warming. The governor, at least so far, seems to be standing up to business interests that have called the bill’s mandatory cap on carbon dioxide emissions an expensive “job killer.” Now the sticking point is whether the bill’s sponsor, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles), will stand up to environmental groups that oppose letting companies meet the new restrictions through a market-based approach, which would enable them to buy and sell pollution credits.

Such a “cap and trade” system has worked well in the context of the Clean Air Act. It sets a ceiling for overall pollution but then enables businesses themselves to decide the most efficient way to achieve that overall limit. Still, some environmentalists find such an approach unjust, especially when it results in polluting industries remaining in poor or minority neighborhoods. It would be fairer, they argue, to cut down on emissions across the board.

In an ideal world, it would be. But then, global warming isn’t exactly just either, which is worth remembering on this first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Although it is too simplistic to say that global warming caused Katrina -- the term takes into account a pattern of climate change, not a single hurricane, drought or heat wave -- scientists believe that hurricanes and cyclones worldwide will grow more powerful as they move across warming oceans. Katrina gave us a preview of the damage that can occur when a powerful storm hits a populated area. Everyone suffered, but the poor were literally left to drown.

It is going to take tough caps on carbon dioxide emissions to stop or even slow the concentration of greenhouse gases that have been building in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. Meeting such caps is going to take an array of regulations and incentives, carrots and sticks. As a group of 60 prominent economists from throughout California wrote in an open letter to the governor and the Legislature: “Emission caps combined with a range of regulatory and market-based implementation mechanisms offer a particularly potent strategy ... [and] assures that economic forces are directed to finding the most efficient means of reducing emissions.”

The bill, as originally written, says the state “may” consider a market approach. Schwarzenegger rightly wants a firmer commitment. The Democratic leadership should oblige him and seize this opportunity to pass groundbreaking legislation that is good not only for the state but for the planet.