Past Is Prologue: Recent Carbon Regulation Disputes in Europe Shape the U.S. Carbon Future
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Missouri Environmental Law and Policy Review
Abstract
With looming and necessary regulation of carbon emissions and global warming, past is prologue. The significant, and often obscured, conflicts that recently erupted in the European Union (hereinafter "EU") to regulate carbon pursuant to the Kyoto Protocol, forecasts similar looming conflicts among U.S. stakeholders as the U.S. attempts to implement carbon regulation. These conflicts inside the UE, and prologue for the upcoming U.S. development of carbon protocol, fall into a handful=l of categories: Conflict over the auction of CO2 emission rights instead of continued allocation of emission rights without charge to traditional emitters. Carbon regulation represents the first time in world history that a significant quantity of emission rights have been auctioned, and will skew significantly the regulatory and economic costs of production in affected industries. Less developed states are resisting moderately aggressive carbon regulation, asking more developed states to bear more of the carbon reductions. States more dependent on coal-fired electric generation are more resistant to CO2 regulation. This regulation will impose significantly higher costs on area utilizing traditional coal-fired power. Emerging changes for centralized control over carbon emissions, superceding individual state control over carbon emission credit amounts and allocations to local industry. While an international problem, even the Kyoto Protocol has no enforcement mechanism should a country not meet its reductions. The speed of implementation of carbon reductions is now being questioned, especially in a time of economic recession. That recession, alone, tends to lower economic activity and carbon emissions, and strains resources to absorb the costs of additional carbon control. This article makes an international comparison of the nature of the European carbon dispute and how it signals similar problems in the U.S. context. There is close parallel between the mushrooming and unresolved carbon conflict among countries in the EU, compared to looming battles over U.S. carbon regulation. Past is prologue. It is not surprising that similar differences among both the European and U.S. states' degree of development, regional reliance on high-carbon coal resources, recourse to carbon auction as a revenue source, and defense of states' rights as opposed to a centralized multi-state solution, are creating parallel frictions as the U.S. develops a climate change policy.
First Page
650
Last Page
689
Publication Date
Summer 2009
Recommended Citation
Cameron Ferrey & Steven Ferrey, Past Is Prologue: Recent Carbon Regulation Disputes in Europe Shape the U.S. Carbon Future, 16 Mo. Env't L. & Pol'y Rev. 650 (2009).
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License