news @ nature.com - US proposal for carbon cuts offers compromise - Climate legislation makes headway in Congress.
Carbon markets and climate change policy in general are gaining momentum in the US for complex reasons. Industry realizes that if they don't act that there may be legislation but I think there is a more complex reason. In a conversation with two researchers from the National Intelligence Office we sketched out three forces that overlap to drive climate policy: climate change, national security and energy independence. It is becoming clear that part of the backlash against the Iraq war has manifested as a concern about the geopolitics of oil. The US and her allies would not be there without the demand for oil from within the continent. Similarly, large scale utilities in the energy sector currently make attractive targets for terrorists. Distributed energy systems, which may reduce emissions would also be more resilient to attack. The combination of these factors may help make for a perfect storm, or at least a squall around climate change.
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