UK & California to bypass Bush camp on climate change say experts

UK & California to bypass Bush camp on climate change say experts

london (Platts)--2Aug2006

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
have signed an agreement to tackle climate change that appears to by-pass US
President George W Bush, amid what several participants involved in the deal
said is a lack of leadership on this issue at federal level.

The talks come as Californian lawmakers are on the verge of adopting the
state's most significant global warming policy to date - a nationally
unprecedented cap on emissions.

"California will not wait for our federal government to take strong action on
global warming," said governor Schwarzenegger after an hour-long roundtable
Monday focused on clean energy and climate issues in Long Beach, California,
with Blair and around 20 local and international business chiefs.

"Today, we are taking an unprecedented step by signing an agreement between
California and the United Kingdom. International partnerships are needed in
the fight against global warming and California has a responsibility and a
profound role to play to protect not only our environment, but to be a world
leader on this issue as well," Schwarzenegger said in a statement after the
talks Monday.

Officials from the California Environmental Protection Agency said they had
not informed the White House that Schwarzenegger would be signing an agreement
with Blair.

White House Council of Environmental Quality spokeswoman Kristy Hellmer told
Platts that the Bush administration "looks at this effort as building on the
work the President Bush and Prime Minister Blair did through the G8 process."
The G8 dialogue has yielded commitments from the world's most influential
economic power to cooperate on clean energy technology.

Asked if the White House is concerned that the Blair-Schwarzenegger effort
will undermine Bush's push for voluntary emissions reductions, Hellmer again
said the California-UK work "dovetails nicely" with the work of the G8.

The agreement commits the UK and California to evaluate and implement
market-based mechanisms that spur innovation. This will include the UK sharing
best practices on emissions trading, and explore the potential for linkages
between market-based mechanisms that will "better enable the carbon market(s)
to accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy," Schwarzenegger said.
The agreement also commits both parties to deepen their understanding of the
economics of climate change, collaborate on technology research, and enhance
linkages between their scientific communities.

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