Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
9/26/2014
A group of national and regional governments, as well as more than 1,000 companies and investors, have formed a new group to help push for the wide-spread adoption of carbon pricing in an effort to combat climate change. The creation of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition was announced by the World Bank this week—a move that came as world leaders met at the U.N. Climate Summit in New York “This new leadership coalition will work to advance carbon pricing solutions after the summit ends tomorrow, and up to Paris in 2015. They will be sharing experience, research, and best practices and spurring action across their sectors, supply chains and with their neighbors and allies,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said during a media teleconference early this week. Kim went on to say that “up to now many people have said, ‘Well, carbon pricing is important but it’s difficult, it’s complicated, it’s not the only solution.’ All these things are true, in part or in full, but today these countries and companies are sharing a preparedness to do what’s needed to speed the economic transition.”
The governments of high-emitting countries like China, Russia and the European Union, as well the governments of countries with growing economies like Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa, were among the 73 national governments to join the coalition. Regional and local governments from 22 states, provinces and cities, were also represented with California, Quebec and the cities of Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro and others also joining. Governments involved in the coalition are responsible for a large amount of global greenhouse gas emissions, as well as global GDP. “Together, these government supporters represent 52 percent of global GDP, 54 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and almost half the world’s population,” Kim said during the teleconference.
U.S. Not Involved in Coalition
Missing from the list of coalition members, however, is the United States. While Kim did not give a direct reason that the United States didn’t sign onto the coalition, he noted that many individual states have joined. “There are several states in the United States on the list, and many of course American companies on the list. And President Obama himself has made a very clear statement supporting carbon pricing. You know the complexities of getting a nation state like the United States to sign onto an agreement through the various legislative channels are frankly a little bit beyond me, but we know that despite the fact that as a country they haven’t signed on, in so many other ways, American citizens, American states, and the president of the United States himself have been very positive about this statement,” Kim said. U.S. states in the coalition include California, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. The cities of Aspen, Colo., Philadelphia, Portland, Ore. and Salt Lake City also signed onto the coalition.
