If President Barack Obama expected to get any "bounce" from December's international climate change talks in Copenhagen in terms of gaining U.S. Senate acceptance of comprehensive climate change legislation, he must have been sorely disappointed. Of course, after his recent State of the Union address--with its focus on domestic jobs--perhaps the president's climate change ambitions are diminished.

Many years ago, I had the pleasure of having Prof. J.B. Ruhl as my guest at the annual Environmental Law Institute awards dinner in Washington, D.C. (For those of you who have not had the opportunity to attend, the dinner is a testament to the environmental bar's collegiality.) At the time, J.B., now the Matthews & Hawkins Professor of Property at Florida State Law School, was teaching at George Washington University Law School and in the midst of publishing a series of intriguing law review articles applying "complexity theory" to environmental law.

The U.S. Senate's inability to pass climate change legislation does not arise from its inability to nail down the particulars of a greenhouse gas (GHG) emission cap-and-trade program. While GHG cap-and-trade programs have been the centerpiece of congressional bills for a number of years, disagreement on the mechanics of such a program is not what has led to legislative stalemate.

John Pendergrass: Our excellent faculty today includes Dina Kruger, director of the Climate Change Division of the Office of Atmospheric Programs at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); Kipp Coddington, a partner with Mowrey Meezan Coddington Cloud LLP; and Russ LaMotte, a partner with Beveridge & Diamond PC.

I. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Initiatives

As Congress debates comprehensive climate change legislation, a second line of action is underway in the United States to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has begun a series of rulemakings to reduce GHG emissions under existing provisions of the Clean Air Act (CAA). To date, EPA has initiated a number of actions that are required under the U.S. Supreme Court's 2007 decision in Massachusetts v.

Editors' Summary

The limited progress of the recent Copenhagen climate negotiations and domestic legislative activity suggests that the time is ripe to identify additional politically viable, low-cost, nonintrusive strategies to reduce carbon emissions. Laws and policies that induce changes in household technology use and adoption are one such strategy. This "behavioral wedge" strategy can be pursued in the near term.

Climate change legislation restricting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is necessary to avoid the costly and potentially catastrophic environmental and economic consequences likely to result from an unabated buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. However, such legislation also imposes compliance costs on electricity generators and other emissions sources. These costs will largely be passed on to consumers. Low-income households will feel the resulting squeeze on their budgets most acutely.

I. Cooperative Federalism and Climate Change

In the universe of prime suspects for greenhouse gas (GHG) controls, the transportation and manufacturing sectors at first blush seemingly emerge as relative afterthoughts in the legislative and regulatory agenda. While both sectors each contribute roughly one-third of the nation's GHG emissions, they are most often overshadowed by approaches to climate change controls on the utility sector, which contributes a greater percentage of emissions and which has been front and center in the discussions so far.