Thad Miller, Columbia grad student

Thad Miller is studying for an MPA in environmental science and policy at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

The work plan for the fall semester is done! Okay, let me back up. I'm the project manager for the Climate Stewardship Act of 2003 project group in the Workshop in Applied Earth Systems Management II (that's a mouthful). There are 12 members in the group and we work through this legislation for two semesters in workshop. During the summer semester, we defined the scientific problem -- greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions leading to global warming -- and then proposed a solution -- the Climate Stewardship Act. (It's a real piece of legislation, introduced in Congress by Sens. Joseph Lieberman [D-Conn.] and John McCain [R-Ariz.] on Jan. 9, 2003.) This semester we must act as if the legislation were going to be implemented on Jan. 1, 2004. Therefore, we must go through some very practical management steps -- produce a staffing plan, a budget, program design options, a master calendar, etc. I'll give you a peek at what we've accomplished so far, and give some background about the bill.

The Climate Stewardship Act will be coming up for a vote this fall. Originally, it was destined to be a rider on the energy bill. However, as time ran out on Congress' last session, the sponsors of the bill were promised a vote and at least six hours of debate in the fall.

Surprisingly, for a bill of this nature, it seems to me that it has received fairly meager press coverage. It's an ambitious, bipartisan environmental bill that amounts to a response to the Kyoto Protocol. As the text of the bill reads, "[t]he Climate Stewardship Act of 2003 (S.139) proposes to provide for a program of scientific research of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by establishing a market-driven system of greenhouse gas tradable allowances."

The legislation includes three titles. Title I establishes the need for further research into climate change. Title II creates a National Greenhouse Gas Database that provides the base for Title III, which establishes a market for GHG emissions. I'm concerned mainly with Titles II and III. The database would enable the creation of sector emissions baselines, which would inform the establishment and distribution of GHG emissions caps. The sectors included under the act are: energy, commercial, industrial, and transportation. (Note the omission of agriculture, which is a large source of methane. A question we'll be exploring this semester is the reason for this omission. However, we all suspect that the basic reason is that the bill would have no chance to even hit the floor in Congress if agriculture were included due to the power of our nation's agricultural lobby.) Entities in each covered sector must submit annual reports of their emissions to the U.S. EPA to create the database. The emissions covered under the bill amount to 70 to 85 percent of the annual GHG emissions in the United States.

The cornerstone of the act is the creation of a market-driven system to reduce GHGs. Similar to Kyoto, this would establish an upper limit of emissions and then give tradable allowances to the entities covered. The cap has two phases. Phase I would begin in 2010 and establish a cap at 2000 levels. Phase II would begin in 2016 and bring emissions down to 1990 levels. These caps are in accordance with the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, though they are less aggressive than the Kyoto caps, which call for the U.S. to bring emissions to 8 percent below 1990 levels.

Under the act, a nonprofit corporation would be set up through which entities would buy, sell, borrow, and bank allowances -- the Climate Change Credit Corporation. An analysis by the Department of Energy projects that under the act U.S.-produced GHG emissions would be reduced by 20 percent in 2016 and by 39 percent in 2025, relative what the U.S. would produce in those years based upon the current emissions trajectory. While the emissions levels projected to result from this act are far from achieving stabilization of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, they are clearly a meaningful step toward reduction.

It seems that a major deterrent to the U.S. ratifying the Kyoto Protocol was the apparent substantial effect it would have on the nation's economy. Will the Climate Stewardship Act suffer the same fate? While I must admit it is highly unlikely that the bill will pass given the political environment in Washington, its economic impact should not be the reason for its failure. For instance, MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change predicts household energy expenditures under the bill would increase by a modest $89. Since the EPA refused to do an analysis of the act, we'll use the DOE's analysis again, which concludes that the act would result in a 0.02 percent drop in GDP. This hardly amounts to a large sacrifice for the U.S. economy. In addition, this is saying nothing of the potential substantial savings that could be reached with the development of less CO2-intensive technologies.

In the end, this bill will probably not get passed. However, it will get a substantial amount of debate and bring attention to a matter which since 9/11 has almost fallen off the radar. The Climate Stewardship Act can serve as a framework that future policies can build on. As an optimist, one can only hope that as it goes up for a vote this fall, the debate will turn from whether or not global warming even exists, and from calls for more and more research (which just means delayed action), to what the best policy option is to deal with this global problem.

P.S.: This entry is dedicated to the Climate Stewardship Project group. Thanks!