North American State Governments Take The Lead On GHG Reductions In The Midst Of Central Governments’ Inertia
The central governments of Canada and the US have up to now failed to introduce meaningful greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction legislation, stalling sustainable business spending because of regulatory uncertainty. With Canada officially withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol in December 2011, the renegade continent could seem a hopeless case, unable to provide the necessary legislative incentives for heavy polluters to decrease their GHG emissions. But in the shadows of federal inertia, a pocket of state-level authorities have stepped up to take leadership over GHG reductions, aiming to create regional cap-and-trade systems in North America. California and Quebec kicked off the first transitional year of their cap-and-trade systems on January 1, 2012. This forms part of the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), a scheme which six other US states dropped out of in December 2011. Under the system, companies emitting more than 25,000 tonnes of GHG per year must cap and reduce their emissions from January 1, 2013. There are hopes that Manitoba and Ontario will join the scheme and that British Columbia will have raised its carbon tax to $30 per tonne in 2012.
The success of regional schemes is far from assured. Participation in North American regional cap-and-trade systems still engages only a minority of state governments in the continent. Over the next three years, state governments will have to uphold their commitments and rally laggard states if they are to have a meaningful impact on sustainable business investment and GHG emissions, as our sustainable business spending model for Canada has shown. But as a demonstration that it is politically possible to introduce GHG legislation in a state that is home to a strong base of basic resources and manufacturing industries, Quebec’s cap and trade scheme is a major breakthrough. It is this type of leadership that is missing at a national level.
