Commentary Says States Should Withdraw Claims From Climate Bill

In an op-ed published in the Boston Globe, environmental economist Robert Stavins called on California and members of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to withdraw their request for the climate change bill to provide an exemption allowing them to maintain their programs for cutting GHG emissions.

Stavins, the Albert Pratt professor of business and government at the Harvard Kennedy School, wrote climate change had universal rather than local impacts and therefore there was no reason to allow "states to act more aggressively on environmental protection."

Stavins wrote "existing state systems" should be absorbed by a federal cap-and-trade program. Local governments could still assist the federal program by devising "regionally-differentiated building codes and zoning" to promote energy efficiency. However, Stavins argued that California and the RGGI members "will better serve their states and the country by declaring victory and getting out of the way" than by seeking "to retain their existing state and regional systems."