When the Bush administration is hosting a climate change conference of world's major economies in Honolulu, Hawaii, which started Wednesday, many state governments in the country have already moved forward on the issue on a faster pace, agencies reported.
U.S. President George W. Bush is still resisting compulsory targets for pollution reduction, but twenty-two U.S. states with about 145 million people are exploring mandatory carbon-dioxide caps and emission-credit markets similar to one in the European Union.
The proposals are pressuring Congress to pass legislation that would supersede the state and regional programs with a single national plan.
New York, California, Florida and many other states agree with most industrialized countries that mandatory pollution caps are needed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming.
Ten Northeast states including New York and New Jersey will impose pollution caps on utilities beginning next year.
Climate coalitions have also been formed among states in the Midwest and western parts of the United States.
California, the most populous U.S. state, created the country's first enforceable economy-wide cap on emissions. Florida Governor Charles Crist last year signed a series of executive orders committing the state to cut greenhouse gases.
"The clear message from the states is that we need mandatory action," said Elliot Diringer, director of international strategies at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
"There appears to be consensus within the U.S. and abroad that we need to move beyond the voluntary approach."
In getting ahead of federal policy, states also are competing against one another for clean-energy companies that bring jobs.
Daniel Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, said a million U.S. jobs could be created in renewable energy and efficiency programs.
"It's not going to take a lot more states doing this before the imperative for the U.S. government is to actually catch up," said Kammen, who is also a member of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Governors are not just talking to each other. In October, California, New York, New Jersey and seven other states agreed with countries including those in the EU to cooperate on a worldwide emissions-trading system.
The states in the United States are "the front-runners in changing the attitude of the U.S. toward climate change and climate protection," said Michael Schroeren, a spokesman for the German Federal Environment Ministry.
Former U.S. Senator Timothy Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation, said efforts by the states on global warming will eventually join other important changes in U.S. policy that were started by states instead of the federal government, including voting rights and consumer safety laws.
Some 160 Representatives from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, European Union (Current EU President Slovenia and European Commission), France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United Nations and the United States are attending the two-day conference in Honolulu.
At climate-change talks in Indonesia last month, the U.S. government agreed to help write a new accord to replace the emissions-limiting Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
The plan calls for developed nations to take on binding "commitments or actions," while also requiring developing nations to make efforts to limit output of greenhouse gases.
Source: Xinhua
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