As I walked past another enormous new faux Tuscan villa going up in Denver with a three-car garage, more square footage than your average Milan apartment building and three gigantic air conditioners ready to roar into action this summer, I wondered whether Coloradans would ever do more than pay lip service to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
Given the view from the sidewalk, the answer seems obvious: no.
Then again, there are signs that something fundamental has changed, even if most Colorado homebuilders – hellbent on following the path of the nearly bankrupt devil-may-care American auto industry – have failed to notice.
People are genuinely worried about the future. The threat of climate change is too big to ignore.
On Tuesday, Gov. Bill Ritter announced that Colorado has joined 30 states, two Canadian provinces and the Campo Kumeyaay Nation in California in participating in the Climate Registry, an organization designed to monitor greenhouse-gas emissions and track efforts to reduce them.
The theory is that if we know how much CO2 we’re pumping willy-nilly into the atmosphere, someday we’ll develop a conscience about it.
The registry is modeled after the California Climate Action Registry, which has helped the state reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 30 percent since 1975, while emissions across the rest of the country have remained unchanged.
With a 31-state registry, state-by- state comparisons will be possible, and companies can monitor their own progress at reducing emissions against that of their competitors.
Shareholders, ratepayers and others also might find the data valuable.
The way the Climate Registry works is that power companies, manufacturing plants and other big greenhouse- gas producers will have standardized protocols for reporting emissions. They will be able to establish a baseline and show changes over time.
That way, when mandatory reductions in emissions are imposed – something corporate leaders everywhere consider inevitable – companies that have been progressive about reducing emissions will get credit for being in the vanguard. The pressure instead will be on companies that have failed to reduce emissions.
“Nobody wants to be taken for granted,” said Steve Owens, director of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality and a member of the steering committee developing the registry.
Jim Martin, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said the registry is expected to be operational by January.
“We’re at the very early outset of creating an effective climate action plan for the state,” he said, so how companies will be encouraged to report to the registry is yet to be determined. “We expect the registry will create an opportunity for us to make progress.”
Let’s hope.
Colorado trails several states in developing programs to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
In February, California, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico and Arizona signed the Western Regional Climate Action Initiative to set emissions-
reduction targets and create something like a regional cap-and-trade program to help companies meet them.
“In the absence of any meaningful federal action, it’s up to the states to take the lead on addressing climate change,” said Owens. “Then, if and when the federal government moves toward a national program, the momentum already will have built up here.”
Companies will have a head start on meeting emissions-reduction targets and will be better positioned to compete internationally, he said.
“There is definitely a sense of inevitability,” said Martin. “The U.S. is joining the rest of the world in addressing climate change,” so developing accurate and consistent measurements for greenhouse-gas emissions is an essential first step toward reducing them.
While the Climate Registry looks like nothing more than a weird virtual repository for arcane data at this point, very quickly it is expected to be a vitally important tool for assessing and responding to the global-warming threat.
The numbers won’t lie.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 303-954-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
