REGIONAL politicians are effectively bypassing the Bush administration after its blunt refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the UN agreement setting out obligatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Disaffected with a lack of federal action, a rising tide of state legislators and senators are taking matters into their own hands, pushing new proposals to drive emissions down.
“The conventional wisdom used to be that the problem is global in nature, so only national governments have the responsibility to act,” says Susan Tierney, former Assistant Secretary for Policy at the US Department of Energy and vice-president of Lexecon, a consultancy specialising in electricity and gas issues. But…
