Financial crisis, meet climate crisis

Will New York Gov. Paterson gut the regional northeastern-state carbon cap? 4

New York State relies heavily on Wall Street as an economic engine. With the financial-services industry in its deepest funk since the Great Depression, New York politicians are extremely skittish about the state's economic prospects.

That's why Gov. David Paterson has been scrambling to help prop up AIG, the wobbly New York-based insurance behemoth.

And that's not all he's doing in response to a possible economic slump for his state. According to The Daily Green, the governor is also prepared to gut the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an alliance among ten northeastern states to cap carbon emissions.

The RGGI (known as "Reggie") is scheduled to go into effect next week, but reports TDG's Dan Shapley:

Paterson, a Democrat, recently drafted an executive order that would give him more power to dilute regulations that businesses find onerous. And he refused to exempt RGGI ... in comments to the press.

Grist food editor Tom Philpott farms and cooks at Maverick Farms, a sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Follow my Twitter feed; contact me at tphilpott[at]grist[dot]org.

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  1. GlobalWarmingInc Posted 7:47 am
    16 Sep 2008

    Cap and Trade is BSAll "Cap and Trade" is is a legal money-laundering scheme. How is money going from one company to another going to help the environment in any way?
    Do you Global Warming zealots really want to crush our economy and turn the US into a 3rd world country, all because you believe in some unproven farce?

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  2. jeffgreen11 Posted 10:49 am
    16 Sep 2008

    An inconvenient truthThis phrase holds so true for so many disbelievers. How about oil companies want to keep their profits high. Follow the money.
    How about a doubling of co2 280 to 560 ppm brings about 3 degrees centigrade without pos. feedbacks. With feedbacks it will be 6 degrees increase.
    Now as predicted by James Hanson in 1988 the ice in the artic has accelerated in melting.
    Here are 10 predictions by GW theory that have come true.

    http://www.livescience.com/environment/070419_earth_timel ...
    Carbon cap and trade brings together the entrepreneurial solvers of GW problems with the investors. In the so2 cap and trade the problem was solved in less time than expected and under budget. It is giving the private sector the motivation to do this in the most cost and time efficient way.

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  3. wreckenhavoc Posted 3:39 pm
    16 Sep 2008

    I'm confusedHow does 280 parts per million of anything raise the temperature 3 degrees?  Is that with a constant solar input?  How would it double? Did a big volcano go off?  Don't humans and animals exhale CO2?  Are there just too many humans?  Doesn't Arctic ice melt some every summer?  

    How can I get me some of this cap-in-trade money? I know how to do laundry.

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  4. randino Posted 9:43 pm
    16 Sep 2008

    Oh when the trolls, come marching in!I have noticed we have been getting our share of trolls posting on Grist lately. Espcially regarding global warming. I guess that is a back handed compliment to Grist. It has become significant enough to get noticed and thus swarmed (or is it skunked up?) by the opposition. Such is the downside of success.
    Too bad there is no such thing as sheep dip for a web site. The ticks are getting bothersome.
    Randy Cunningham

    Cleveland, OH

    Randy Cunningham

    Permalink

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