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Danny Cullenward

Forensic climate economist, greenhouse gas accountant, author, and lawyer
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ProPublica: Cap and Trade Is Supposed to Solve Climate Change, but Oil and Gas Company Emissions Are Up

November 15, 2019

ProPublica’s Lisa Song quotes me in a comprehensive story about the challenges with California’s cap-and-trade program:

Countries have called California’s cap-and-trade program the answer to climate change. But it is just as vulnerable to lobbying as any other legislation. The result: The state’s biggest oil and gas companies have actually polluted more since it started.

[….]

“There’s no question a well-designed regulation on oil and gas can have an effect,” said Danny Cullenward, a Stanford researcher and policy director at Near Zero, a climate policy think tank. “And that was traded away for a weak cap-and-trade program.”

[….]

Cullenward said the reality of society’s reliance on fossil fuels leaves regulators in a bind — stuck between knowing what it will take to manage climate change but adopting a market solution that’s too weak by design. Any attempt to seriously strengthen it risks a consumer backlash that makes it “politically toxic,” he said.

“Essentially, what we’re doing is kicking the can,” Cullenward said. “We’re saying, keep prices low, let’s not do a lot, and later, we’ll hope for a miracle.”

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