

Wind turbines near a German coal-fired power plant. (REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski)

The Environmental Protection Agency will soon demand that states cut their greenhouse-gas emissions. You would think that state leaders, particularly Republicans warning of an EPA regulatory apocalypse, would be frantically reaching for the least onerous strategies to comply. But so far many have shown more interest in lambasting the EPA than in accepting the sorts of policies that would make new carbon regulations easiest on people. Their citizens will pay if they don’t change course.

The way states comply with the EPA matters. The agency figures that if states banded together into regional greenhouse-gas-cutting pacts, the total cost of the Obama administration’s clean power rule would drop by 17 percent. Even absent a push from the EPA, states should adopt regional, market-based carbon policy because it’s the cheapest way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, a goal all states should share. With the EPA’s impending carbon mandate, it’s an even easier policy choice. But with a few exceptions, it’s one that states still aren’t making.

California is one of the exceptions. Gov. Jerry Brown (D) touted his state’s carbon dioxide program at a Friday meeting with Post writers and editors, drawing particular attention to its cap-and-trade program. Cap-and-trade has endured a lot of right-wing abuse over the past several years, but a well-designed program is, in fact, a market-based approach and among the most efficient ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Many Republicans were for this sort of plan before their party turned against it. Indeed, several Western states moved to cooperate with California in the so-called Western Climate Initiative, which would have created a regional carbon market under a multi-state cap-and-trade agreement. But California was the only state that followed through.

Now that the federal government is set to demand that the states cut their carbon emissions, one would expect Western governors to beat down Jerry Brown’s door, seeking to join California, revive the regional cap-and-trade plan and ask the EPA to give them credit for the resulting carbon dioxide cuts. But, astonishingly, Brown said that not a single governor has asked him about this possibility, and he seemed surprised I would even suggest such a thing.

Then again, perhaps Brown’s answer isn’t so astonishing. Around the same time California created its carbon market, a group of Northeastern states established their own functional cap-and-trade scheme, known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Just as Western states can link up with California in the Western Climate Initiative, Eastern states can join RGGI and take that to the EPA. Some Republicans have acknowledged the idea’s merit. Virginia Del. Ronald A. Villanueva (Virginia Beach) tried to convince his fellow GOP legislators to join RGGI in the state legislature’s latest session. They didn’t take his good advice. Instead, Virginia Republicans have thrown a lot of angry rhetoric at the EPA, but they haven’t done much to prepare for the regulatory onslaught they claim is coming.

The positive view is that state leaders still have time before the EPA’s rules phase in, and more will accept the smart approach as the EPA clarifies its requirements and as deadlines approach. Officials from several states, for example, have been discussing the creation of a regional initiative based in the Midwest, perhaps building on a previous Midwestern cap-and-trade plan that never launched. But they have not gotten very far.

The negative view is that, whether out of ideology or poor judgment, state officials will continue their negligent approach to carbon dioxide emissions. States such as Texas have made a virtue of defying the EPA in the past. But states will have to comply, the easy way or the hard way. Which to choose should already be a matter of bipartisan consensus in every statehouse.