Western Climate Initiative: Historic First Step, Essential Improvements Needed
Seattle, WA – “Cleaning up global warming pollution creates new jobs, moves us toward clean energy and protects consumers and natural resources.
“Today’s announcement by western leaders underscores the importance of taking bold steps to combat global warming pollution. We praise them for keeping this issue at the forefront of policy makers and the public at this critical time.
“While the fundamentals of today’s Agreement are sound, we urge lawmakers to address a few significant flaws that remain.
“We are disappointed that western leaders did not send a strong enough signal that the interests of the public need to come before the interests of polluting industries. Today’s Agreement gives significant discretion to individual states on whether to require industries to buy their pollution permits. Giving away the right to pollute will undercut investments needed to move to a clean energy future, and protect consumers and the region’s…
