CLIMATE CHANGE/ENERGY/POLITICS: “A day after President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord, states and cities around the country are vowing to adhere to their own aggressive climate policies, independent of the federal government.
Twenty states and Washington have adopted their own greenhouse gas emission targets, according to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, and some press beyond the U.S. commitment under the accord, which sought to reduce greenhouse emissions 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2025.
None, however, have gone further than California, which has emerged as a national leader on climate policy and a potentially powerful counterweight to the Trump administration’s efforts to rollback U.S. commitments.
California Gov. Jerry Brown is encouraging states to pursue their own climate standards—developing his own international climate agenda, recruiting other states for climate pacts, and pushing tougher standards than the federal government had under the Obama administration.
Following the Thursday [6-1-17] announcement, Mr. Brown, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Washington state Governor Jay Inslee said they would form a new coalition of states committed to upholding the American side of the Paris treaty deal.
The governors called the coalition the United States Climate Alliance, which they said will ‘act as a forum to sustain and strengthen existing climate programs, promote the sharing of information and best practices, and implement new programs to reduce carbon emissions from all sectors of the economy.’ “
-Alejandro Lazo, “U.S. States Defy Trump’s Climate Pact Withdrawal,” The Wall Street Journal online, June 2, 2017 9:13am