Another smuggy day in California

Last night I read a really hopeful article in The Economist about the America's attempts to address global warming.

Reading the article made me proud to be a resident of California because my state has taken the lead in America towards decreasing greenhouse gases and energy consumption. As the graph shows, per capita electricity consumption has been level since the 70's and has been recently decreasing.

The article in The Economist requires a subscription to read but it's well worth it. It discusses the security, business and community benefits of changing to a lower carbon based economy. My favorite part of this article discusses how our state is leading the nation in initiatives to decrease greenhouse gases. I've transcribed this section here:

Congress may be thinking about tackling greenhouse-gas emissions, but California has already done it. Its Global Warming Solutions Act, which was passed last year, aims to cut them to 1990 levels by 2020 - an ambitious target for a state that has grown rapidly in the past 15 years and will probably continue to do so. The details have yet to be fleshed out, but the reductions will come from both a cap-and-trade scheme for industry and regulations of various sorts.

Mr Schwarzenegger issued the first such regulation earlier this month, obliging producers of petrol and other fuels to cut the emissions of carbon dioxide from their products by 10% by 2020 - presumably by mixing in more ethanol and other biofuels. It is not California's first attempt to reduce emissions from transport: its legislature voted for stringent cuts in 2002. That move has become snarled in a court battle over whether states have the right to set fuel-economy standards. Meanwhile, the politicians keep trucking. In September, the state showily sued six car manufacturers, alleging they had damaged its climate. It is also suing the EPA, for failing to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions.

California's politicians are keen on renewables too. State law requires utilities to generate 20% of the power they sell from sources such as windmills and biomass plants by 2010, and 33% by 2020. Solar power has won even greater favour: under the "million solar roofs" scheme, the state plans to spend more than $3 billion over the next decade subsidising the installation of solar-power panels.

California has also pioneered the practice of "decoupling", which deprives power firms of their incentive to sell as much electricity as possible. Instead, the local regulator has devised a formula to reward firms whose sales are lower than expected, and to allow the recovery of the costs of energy-efficiency schemes.

Such measures (along with high power prices to pay for them) have helped California rein in its electricity consumption - although lovely weather and a relative lack of heavy industry have also played a part. Power use per person has remained roughly stable in the state since the 1970s, even as it has doubled in the rest of the country (see chart above). As a result, California's greenhouse-gas emissions per person are on a par with those of Denmark. Relative to the size of its economy, they are lower.

I'm very proud of my state and our green Governator for taking the lead in addressing the problem of global climate change. California may be leading the nation into lowering greenhouse gas emissions but it is also the leading the nation in creating smug.