California’s Cap-and-Trade Funds
Last month California Governor Jerry Brown released a plan to borrow $500 million from the state’s cap-and-trade proceeds for the state general fund to balance other climate-related expenditures. Critics have voiced opposition to the plan, citing that the funds generated from the program were designed to support new projects that further reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
RFF’s Dallas Burtraw notes that the magnitude of revenue from the auction will increase by roughly $6 billion beginning in 2015, making bold investments possible. Burtraw writes “Revenue from the auction might be returned directly back to households or used to make investments that improve the state. This is the key decision that should be of interest to all Californians.”
BLM Fracking Rules
Recently the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released “its first update of hydraulic fracturing regulations in three decades.” This sparked criticism from some, who called the proposal “redundant federal regulation.”
However, RFF’s Nathan Richardson and Alan Krupnick believe that “These arguments miss the mark.” They note that in this role, BLM is acting as a landowner—not a regulator—who has the right to impose restrictions on the use of that land. “Attacking BLM’s proposal as federal overreach into state affairs hinders real debate about the rules’ content, and about the right balance of federal, state, and local drilling regulation in general,” they write on Common Resources.
