Climate Change Vice President Scott Schang on the impact of congressional legislation and agency rulemaking

• Pages: 56-57

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Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, May/June 2010

ELI Report

we start? I mean, if and

when Congress does pass

legislation, what are the f‌irst

steps that need to take place

in order to get the wheels

turning and some motion

going on this?

Schang: e f‌irst steps

have already happened.

One interesting thing that

came out of the confer-

ence was the notion that,

while we don’t yet have a

U.S. action plan for climate

change, guide stars are start-

ing to appear. For example,

the president did say in the

annex to the Copenhagen

Accord that the U.S. would

try to reduce greenhouse

gas emissions by 17 percent

if Congress acted. But the

U.S. has, we’ve seen in

Waxman-Markey, those

same goals. So, in a broad

sense, the United States is

starting to move down the

road.

We also have the EPA

starting to move in terms

of implementing some

rulemakings surrounding

climate and we have the

states. e states, obviously,

have already been well

down the road, and they

will no longer sit idle if the

Congress continues to stay

stalled.

Trauzzi: So, do the same

challenges exist if EPA regu-

lates versus if we have cap-

and-trade legislation?

Schang: ose present

very dif‌ferent challenges,

but one of the messages

that came from the confer-

ence was that, one way or

another we’re going to get

this done. ere was a real

consensus that we need

federal legislation, and that’s

really the way that would be

the most ef‌f‌icient and the

most ef‌fective for regulating

greenhouse gases.

But people also said,

Look, if we don’t get federal

legislation we’re still going

to move. Gina McCarthy

made the point that EPA

does have a legal duty to

move on greenhouse gases.

But we also heard about

the states and individual

actions, what you can do

at very dif‌ferent levels and

the need to use all the dif-

ferent tools that we have in

our toolkit to actually make

progress.

Mike Vandenbergh gave

an interesting talk about the

impact of individuals on

climate and how what we

really have to do here, up at

the federal, state, and local

level, is to change behavior.

Cap and trade is just one

tool to try to change be-

havior.

Trauzzi: ere’s a lot of

money at stake here. How

do you avoid corruption

and scandals from taking

place?

Schang: at’s hugely

important, and that’s actu-

ally one of the reasons I

think we are having some

trouble politically with cap

and trade. e Waxman-

Markey legislation was writ-

ten in a somewhat dif‌ferent

time. It was before the

economy met signif‌icant

dif‌f‌iculties. It was before

Wall Street lost a lot of the

conf‌idence of the American

Monica Trauzzi: Scott,

ELI recently held an event

focusing on the issues sur-

rounding the implementa-

tion of a cap-and-trade

bill. [See preceding page.]

It assumes that one will

eventually pass, but it’s an

important discussion to

have because billions of dol-

lars will be at stake once we

have a cap-and-trade system

in place. So, what are the

primary challenges you see

associated with the imple-

mentation of cap and trade?

Scott Schang: e

conference focused on

implementing climate pol-

icy broadly in the United

States. So, cap and trade

was the reason we actually

decided to have the confer-

ence. Back in the summer

we thought, Look, Wax-

man-Markey has gone fairly

well. We think by February

2010 we’ll probably have

a fairly good sense of what

the Senate bill will look

like. at didn’t happen.

So the conference did

talk about cap and trade

and how you could imple-

ment it and the fact that

implementing a program

like this is really key in

order to do the design.

Lori Schmidt and people

from the Hill talked a little

bit about how they had

thought about enforcement

and the need for monitor-

ing and the need for other

tools to be available and

built into the legislation

so you could actually do a

cap-and-trade program that

worked on the ground once

it was implemented.

Trauzzi: So, where do

Climate Change Vice President Scott Schang on the impact of

congressional legislation and agency rulemaking

ELI Vice President for Climate and Sustainability Scott Schang discusses climate change with

E&ETV’s Monica Trauzzi.