The issuance of a proposed program design for the multi-state Western Climate Initiative is being pushed back from August to mid-September, but the Western Climate Initiative still expects to release a work plan by October 29. “The timing’s been moved back primarily because of logistics things,” said Michael Gibbs, the assistant secretary for climate change with the California Environmental Protection Agency, citing the Democratic national convention in late August and the Republican convention in early September among the reasons. Gibbs, who on August 13 led a conference call on the Western Climate Initiative’s recent activities, called the program design “the end of the beginning” for the initiative. “This document is very important in creating this policy framework,” he said. The Western Climate Initiative, launched in February 2007, is a collaboration of western U.S. states and Canadian provinces to develop regional strategies to address climate change, specifically greenhouse gases. Initiative members California, Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, Oregon, Utah and the provinces British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec, are collaborating on collective ways to reduce greenhouse gas production. The participants have each assigned staff from environmental agencies and the governors’ and premiers’ offices to create a carbon cap-and-trade program for the western region.
