Earth Equity News

Preemptive Action: Federal Laws Overriding State Laws. Posted by Daniel Hall, Economist.com, July 3, 2008. "In the United States it is called 'preemption', a term of art referring to the displacing effect that federal laws have on conflicting state laws. Up until recently it has not received much attention in the U.S. climate policy debate. That is changing. This is largely because in the absence of federal regulatory action on climate change, many states have made plans to implement programs of their own. It is also partly due to political dynamics in the U.S. Congress: as proposals for a federal policy become more detailed and the prospect of passing a bill increases, the regional considerations that must be balanced to secure support (read: horse-trading) become more important. States are at various stages in defining their own approaches to climate policy. California is out in front: it passed legislation setting emission reduction targets in 2006 and has recently laid out the specific policies it will use to meet those targets (including a cap-and-trade program and a raft of renewable energy and efficiency measures). A group of 10 northeastern states have agreed to implement a regional cap-and-trade program for electric utility emissions starting in 2009. And there are similar, though far more nascent, plans for regional cap-and-trade systems in the midwest and western United States. As all these programs move closer to implementation the question of preemption in federal legislation will grow... But within a country, particularly a wealthy and egalitarian one like America, it is harder to see why a federal program -- with a single price on emissions throughout the economy -- would not make the most economic sense. The current actions at the state level, however, mean that several questions surrounding the interplay between federal and state laws must be addressed... The Committee on Energy and Commerce of the U.S. House of Representatives put out a white paper [PDF, 25 pp] examining federal, state, and local government roles in climate policy. Robert Huffman and Jonathan Weisgall discuss the Constitutional issues [Sustainable Development, Law and Policy, 2008 winter issue, PDF 92 pp] surrounding climate change programs."