Thirty-one states representing 70 percent of the country's population announced on May 8 that they had signed on to a new Climate Registry to measure, track, verify and publicly report the greenhouse-gas emissions by major industries.Based on a pioneering California program, the registry is considered big news because it requires third-party verification of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere - a feature missing from the Bush administration's reporting program.

The registry is also a precursor, say its backers, to market-based regulations necessary to effectively control America's heavy contribution to planet-threatening climate change.

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano hailed the registry, worked out chiefly by California and New England officials, as the newest example "of how states are taking the lead in the absence of federal action to address greenhouse gas emissions."

Just six days later, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg welcomed a Large Cities Climate Summit of mayors from about 30 major world cities, ranging from Seoul to Los Angeles to Johannesburg.

The dominant message from the New York meetings: Cities may cover less than 1 percent of the Earth's surface, but they generate 80 percent of the globe's heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Cities can take quicker, more-inventive steps to curb emissions than cumbersome or politically encumbered national bureaucracies.

"It is in cities that the battle to tackle climate change will be won or lost," said London Mayor Ken Livingstone. Added Toronto Mayor David Miller: "Where national governments can't or won't lead, cities will."

The mayors exchanged notes on a range of experiments, from advanced biofuels to recycling more solid waste, setting high energy-efficiency standards for new buildings to creating new parks and planting millions of trees. Livingstone touted his successful congestion-pricing system for private vehicles entering central London, a traffic- and pollution-cutting plan that Bloomberg hopes to emulate for Manhattan's business areas as part of his newly announced "greenprint" for the city.

The most dramatic announcement at the global mayors meeting was by former President Bill Clinton. He revealed that his personal foundation had lined up $5 billion in energy-efficiency loan commitments from five major global banking institutions to lend to city governments and landlords in 16 major world cities, among them Bangkok, Berlin, Chicago, Houston, New York, Sao Paulo, Tokyo and Mumbai.

The loans will pay to replace energy-hungry heating, cooling and lighting systems, to seal and upgrade windows to let more light in, and to install sensors to make lighting and air conditioning more efficient. And as if all that weren't exciting enough, the U.S. Climate Action Partnership announced simultaneously it was doubling its membership from 13 to 27 including a dramatic new catch - General Motors. The group, including Environmental Defense, DuPont, BP America and Shell, demands early creation of a cap-and-trade system to combat global climate change. It wants the federal government to move quickly to cut greenhouse emissions 60-80 percent.

One wonders - couldn't the White House, finally, be listening? When will our national nightmare of constant federal foot-dragging on climate change finally be corrected?

But let's be fair. Thrusting all the blame onto 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is patently incorrect.

Earlier this month, 3,000 members of the powerful National Rural Electric Cooperative Association swarmed over Capitol Hill to protect the Depression-era system of low interest loans to build carbon dioxide-spewing coal plants. The electric co-ops are planning, The Washington Post reported, to spend $35 billion, depending on federally subsidized loans, to build conventional coal plants over the next decade. Those new plants will pollute sufficiently, the newspaper determined, to negate, for the 10-year period, all existing state and federal efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

Presidents over the years have tried to curtail the rural electric lending program, arguing that the low-interest loans are no longer justified. President Bush's 2008 budget would do the same. But both Democratic and Republican lawmakers with rural constituencies are mobilizing to keep the low-cost government loans flowing.

Bottom line: Recent breakthroughs, by city and state governments, are welcome. But in the real political world, many of the most critical climate change political battles lie ahead.

Neal Peirce's column appears alternate Mondays on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is nrp@citistates.com

2007, Washington Post Writers Group
Neal Peirce / Syndicated columnist
Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - Page updated at 02:00 AM