Interchange Blog
Breaking News: 300 Ideas in 100 Days
Climate Progress is getting a 12-hour jump on the release of the new plan from the Presidential Climate Action Project (which should be available in full here Tuesday).
How ambitious should the next President be in tackling global warming? A document being issued tomorrow by a team at the University of Colorado indicates that No. 44 can be, and should be, far more aggressive than any of the candidates has promised so far.
The Presidential Climate Action Project — a two-year effort headquartered at the university — is releasing a presidential action agenda that contains more than 300 specific changes in federal policies, programs and statutes, and proposes that the chief executive act on all of them within the first 100 days of inauguration, under executive authority or by championing them in the Administration’s first legislative and budget packages to Congress.
The plan is being billed as not only the most comprehensive, but in many ways the boldest, climate action agenda yet put before the American public and the presidential candidates.
It calls for the U.S. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30% below 2010 levels by 2020 and 90% by 2050, in part through an “upstream” cap and auction program that regulates the approximately 1,500 “first providers” of fossil energy — wellheads, mine mouths, etc. That regime is simpler to administer than mid-stream and down-stream regulation and would cover 100% of the economy.
Other key proposals include: