CLIMATE CHANGE CONTRADICTIONS IN THE STATES

Increasingly, those that would want to deny that there is a change in the global climate are becoming fewer and quieter. — Patricia Mulroy, general manager, Southern Nevada Water Authority

Patricia Mulroy fears climate change. Ms Mulroy became general manager of the Las Vegas, Nevada, Valley Water District and the Southern Nevada Water Authority in 1991. The district provides water to millions of people, residents and tourists alike, in a desert where average rainfall is about four inches a year and average daily temperatures exceed 80 degrees Fahrenheit six months every year. For water and electric power Las Vegas depends on nearby Hoover Dam and its huge reservoir, Lake Mead, two of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's signature 1930s public works accomplishments. In fact, Las Vegas could not exist without the Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, and the Colorado River.

At one time Las Vegas had the reputation of being a place where water was wasted with abandon. Huge, elaborate fountains in front of casinos belie the city's location in one of the driest places in the United States. But businesses and government agencies in the Las Vegas area have increased conservation and diminished their "water footprint." Las Vegas residents are paid to stop growing grass and to plant xeric landscapes. Demand-side water management is fundamental to everyday life in Las Vegas.

The impetus for this turnabout in attitude and practices has been a fourteen-year drought that has plagued the western United States and caused Lake Mead to drop to about 50 percent of its capacity, causing a 100 foot tall "bathtub ring." The drought has made a climate change believer of Ms Mulroy. She says Las Vegas is a "bullseye" for the resultant effects: "We were seeing the consequences of climate change first ... we had to bring about a fundamental change in how people use water in this community."

To help provide certainty in water supply Nevada has signed a new water sharing strategy with the other western states that depend on the Colorado River. In 2007 seven states signed a regional compact that divides up the flow of the Colorado River in times of shortages. Earlier versions of that compact stretch back to 1922 and it has been the source of much contention over the years. But Ms Mulroy worries that even this new agreement will not suffice in the face of the shrinking water supplies that result from a warmer climate. Despite the sea change in behavior she has observed in Las Vegas, Ms Mulroy is concerned that Americans view clean water as a fundamental human right but are not willing to pay for the infrastructure necessary to deliver that "right." A bright spot is an improved working relationship with other Colorado River–dependent states. She labels this new cooperative relationship a "sophisticated interdependence" that is the "only way we can survive moving forward."

One might expect the state of Nevada to share Ms Mulroy's concerns over the effects of climate change on water availability, but the evidence is mixed on this front. In 2008 Republican governor Jim Gibbons' Climate Change Advisory Committee published a lengthy report on the impacts of climate change in Nevada with recommendations that included developing renewable energy resources (especially solar), increasing demand-side management for electrical power, and developing a Climate Action Plan. Governor Gibbons signed a new energy law in 2009 that increased to 25 percent the proportion of electrical power to be produced from renewable sources by 2025 (the state's goal had been 20 percent renewable power by 2015), required energy efficiency measures for public facilities, and mandated that car dealers disclose information about carbon dioxide emissions from new cars. Nevada is home to Solar One, one of the largest solar power producing facilities in the world, and the state has extensive geothermal resources.

But as of this writing the Nevada Climate Action Plan is not in evidence and the Climate Change Advisory Committee's 2008 report could not be found on any state website. Nevada Energy, the state's major power producer, has met its renewable portfolio requirement by purchasing power produced in states with no renewable portfolio laws. Critics complain that such purchases violate the spirit of the law, which was supposed to stimulate green energy development within Nevada. Republican governor Brian Sandoval has publicly advocated the development of renewable energy, and in 2013 Sandoval supported a proposal by Nevada Energy to phase out coal-fired power.

Meanwhile, neighboring state California presses ahead with the first greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program in the United States to include a wide variety of polluting sources. In 2006 Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which mandates an economy-wide emissions cap with enforceable penalties. The California Air Resources Board has adopted an emissions trading program as a central element of the state's climate change program. Democratic governor Jerry Brown calls climate change skeptics "denialists" and he signed into law in 2011 a mandate that by 2020 33 percent of the state's electricity should come from renewable sources. In April 2013 Governor Brown approved the linkage of California and Québec's greenhouse gas emission trading scheme. The 2013 California–Québec pact aims to harmonize and integrate the Parties' cap-and-trade programs.

Observers from other nations might struggle to understand the existence of such disparate political actions within a state and between neighboring states. On a superficial level, disconnected and startlingly different state-level greenhouse gas action is possible in the United States because there is no national climate change or renewable energy law. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has moved ahead cautiously to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. In 2013 EPA proposed national standards for new fossil fuel electrical generating facilities. If EPA proceeds as expected each state must submit by June 2016 a plan for regulating existing fossil fuel electrical power plants that follows EPA guidelines to be finalized in June 2015. But for now the states currently are free to undertake a variety of climate policies, ranging from doing nothing, the path chosen by states like Virginia and Louisiana, to aggressive action, undertaken by states like California and New York.

In fact, it's quite usual in the United States for the states to undertake environmental action before the federal government. Action by the states was part of the impetus for national environmental legislation in the 1970s after...