Maryland's Gov. Martin O'Malley will support a bill that would impose some of the nation's toughest limits on global warming pollution, according to administration and legislative sources, the Baltimore Sun reported Feb. 18.
The measure, SB 309, now under consideration in the state Legislature, would impose a 25 percent cut in greenhouse gases from all industries in Maryland by 2020 and a 90 percent cut by 2050. Those figures are on a par with California's AB 32 and a 2005 executive order signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
According to the newspaper, Maryland would use a system of financial penalties and rewards to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for altering the climate. The Sun reported that many environmental groups, wary of possible global warming-related flooding along the state's low-lying Eastern Shore, support the bill. But at the same time business groups and many Republicans are fighting the proposal, saying mandatory caps on carbon dioxide could drive businesses out of the state and derail the economy.
What are the prospects for the bill? Uncertain, according to the Sun. The paper noted a similar bill failed last year, although the O'Malley administration helped win approval for a more limited "clean cars" bill that will cut emissions of global warming gases from vehicles by an estimated one-third.
Sen. Paul G. Pinsky, the sponsor of the bill, told the newspaper that O'Malley (pictured above), a fellow Democrat, might offer an amendment to make cap-and-trade systems optional for industries beyond the electricity sector. The decision on how to regulate greenhouse gases would be made by the Maryland Department of the Environment. The proposal does not specify exactly how the state would cut greenhouse gases. But the bill lays out a timetable the state's environmental agencies must follow to propose a series of regulations for each business and sector of the economy, the Sun reported.
This saving the planet stuff just isn't complicated enough, it seems.
Maryland's 
A new federal economic analysis of the .jpeg)
emissions by 2025, a significantly less ambitious objective than that established by some of the states, including California.
A key member of the international body that has done much to warn the world of the dangers of climate change says that a needed part of the solution – government support for research into new technologies – is falling ominously short.
British Columbia is moving forward with a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gases, laying the groundwork for the province's involvement in a Western North American regional trading system.
Governors in Vermont and Utah have become the latest to sign legislation intended to curtail greenhouse gas emissions, boost renewable energy generation, or both.
The coal war, it seems, is heating up by the day. And the battlegrounds are not always in places commonly associated with aggressive environmentalism
Despite all the talk about greenhouse gas reductions and the means to achieve them, including establishing new trading schemes for carbon, a pair of new studies suggests the nation has a ways to go.
Led by Washington state, where the governor just signed a new law charting a path to reduced greenhouse gas emissions, Western states have made several recent moves on the climate change and renewable energy fronts.
Even during a period of scary economic headlines, some experts see efforts to control climate change through market mechanisms as a green light at the end of a dark tunnel.
approaches, including implementing a cap-and-trade system, for reducing the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. But they left some critical decisions until later in the year.
Northern California utility .jpeg)
The notion that a cap-and-trade program provides the best way of forcing and/or encouraging reductions in greenhouse gas emissions appears to be running into some opposition from one sector of the environmental community. 
California's top utility regulator has endorsed a cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electrical generation but he's advising a go-slower approach when it comes to natural gas providers. 