The Economist - June 21, 2007

 

Environmental policy

Arnie's uphill climb

 California's confident approach to climate change has inspired America and the world. But things do not look so good in the state itself

 

n most parts of the world, climate change is a worrying subject. Not so in California. At a recent gathering of green luminaries—in a film star's house, naturally, for that is how seriousness is often established in Los Angeles—the dominant note was self-satisfaction at what the state has already achieved. And perhaps nobody is more smug than Arnold Schwarzenegger. Unlike Al Gore, a presidential candidate turned prophet of environmental doom, California's governor sounds cheerful when talking about climate change. As well he might: it has made his political career.

Although California has long been an environmentally-conscious state, until recently greens were concerned above all with smog and redwood trees. “Coast of Dreams”, Kevin Starr's authoritative history of contemporary California, published in 2004, does not mention climate change. In that year, though, the newly-elected Mr Schwarzenegger made his first tentative call for western states to seek alternatives to fossil fuels. Gradually he noticed that his efforts to tackle climate change met with less resistance, and more acclaim, than just about all his other policies. These days it can seem as though he works on nothing else.

Mr Schwarzenegger's transformation from screen warrior to eco-warrior was completed last year when he signed a bill imposing legally-enforceable limits on greenhouse-gas emissions—a first for America. The bill, which is just 13 pages long, obliges California to cut its emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. That alone is ambitious, considering that the state's population is expected to increase by 42% in the period. But Mr Schwarzenegger has set up two other targets. He wants the state to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to 2000 levels by 2010, and to slash them to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.

Thanks mostly to its lack of coal and heavy industry, California is a relatively clean state. If it were a country it would be the world's eighth-biggest economy, but only its 16th-biggest polluter. Its big problem is transport—meaning, mostly, cars and trucks, which account for more than 40% of its greenhouse-gas emissions (see chart) compared with 32% in America as a whole. The state wants to ratchet down emissions limits on new vehicles, beginning in 2009. Mr Schwarzenegger has also ordered that, by 2020, vehicle fuel must produce 10% less carbon: in the production as well as the burning, so a simple switch to corn-based ethanol is probably out.

Californians of the future will also be expected to use cleaner electricity. The state subsidises solar power, with the intention of creating a million power-generating roofs within ten years. It has, in effect, banned electricity companies from signing long-term contracts with coal-fired power stations, and plans to buy from cleaner sources. In 2002 Gray Davis, then the Democratic governor, signed a bill that committed the state to obtaining a fifth of its power from renewable sources, not including nuclear or large hydro-electric power stations, by 2017. Last year, in a typically cocky gesture, the deadline was brought forward to 2010.

Mr Schwarzenegger now jets around the United States and Canada (covering his emissions by buying offsets in a working redwood forest), commending other states on their efforts to control global warming and bashing the federal government for failing to take action. His message is perfectly pitched both to Californians' belief that they are America's innovators and to the western suspicion of big government. It helps enormously that he is a Republican—“a Republican going against type” as Terry Tamminen, an adviser, puts it. If he were not, it would be easy to typecast him as a lefty tree-hugger.

Thanks in part to California's example, most of the western states have adopted climate action plans. When it comes to setting emission targets, the scene can resemble a posedown at a Mr Olympia contest. Arizona's climate-change wonks decided to set a target of cutting the state's emissions to 2000 levels by 2020. But Janet Napolitano, the governor, was determined not to be out-muscled by California. She has declared that Arizona will try to return to 2000 emission levels by 2012.

All of which is a welcome change from business as usual. California has not just inspired other states; it has created a vanguard that ought to be able to prod the federal government into stronger national standards than it would otherwise consider. But California is finding it easier to export its policies than to put them into practice at home.

The state's first hurdle, which requires it to generate a fifth of its electricity from renewable sources in three years' time, now seems impossibly high. Last year it managed just 11%. Although the energy companies are eagerly signing up wind and sun farmers, there is simply not enough supply out there—at least, at the price the companies want to pay. Meanwhile, the plan to install solar roofs on houses has been stymied by the high cost of photovoltaic panels, red tape and a requirement, temporarily suspended, that customers buy additional power at rates that vary according to demand. That would have increased some households' energy bills.

Loud words, soft actions

Despite making some optimistic assumptions about future contracts, the public utilities commission has concluded that the state will miss its target for renewables. And the aim of cutting emissions from electricity production to 1990 levels by the end of the next decade may be just as unrealistic. Art Rosenfeld, the energy commissioner, has tried to work out how it can be done. He, too, makes heroic assumptions about improved energy efficiency, but still cannot make the sums add up.

It is a bad sign that California's electricity suppliers are struggling, because electricity is something over which the state wields considerable control. It has less power over carmakers, who are fighting to prevent California imposing emissions standards on them. If they succeed, even temporarily, California's goals will become unreachable. Thanks partly to the lack of rain and snow in California, vehicles stay on the road for a long time. It takes 16 years for half the cars made in a given year to be retired from service.

The state has even less power to slow the growth of its population, or to dictate where people live. It hopes “smart growth” policies (which encourage people to live closer together, and to take public transport) can get it a whopping 15% of the way towards its overall 2020 goal. But the news from that front is discouraging. The state is growing fastest in what Joel Kotkin and William Frey, in a report for the Brookings Institution, call the “third California”—a wide strip of dusty land sandwiched between the Pacific coast and the Sierra Nevada mountains. Between 2000 and 2005 that area gained almost 1.4m people—twice as many as southern California and more than 27 times as many as the San Francisco Bay area.

That is a huge environmental problem, for two reasons. First, it is even harder to do without a car in California's interior than in its sprawling coastal cities. Second, the interior is much hotter, which means more air conditioning. Compare, for example, arid Riverside County (which grew more quickly last year than anywhere else in the state) with maritime Monterey (which lost more people than anywhere). The average residential user in Riverside burned 9,911 kilowatt-hours of electricity last year, close to twice as much as the Monterey average of 5,458.

In one way, California's self-confidence is fully justified. It has done more than any other state—let alone the federal government—to fix America's attention on climate change. It has also made it seem as though the problem can be solved. Which is why failure would be such bad news. At the moment California is a beacon to other states. If it fails, it will become an excuse for inaction.

 

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