Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is looking at potential pricing mechanisms for carbon dioxide emissions.
Speaking in Denver on March 1, Hickenlooper, a Democrat, explained that he participated in discussions about carbon pricing options with officials from Canadian provinces and mountain west states when he was in Washington, D.C., in late February.
"The mountain west states work together very well. I think we're not there yet, but they would be the natural partners that would make something like this really work," Hickenlooper said at a Climate Leadership Conference hosted by C2ES, The Climate Registry and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Governors from a number of states, as well as Democrats in the U.S. Congress, have proposed creating a carbon tax. No such regimen currently exists in the U.S. at the state or federal level, but two major cap-and-trade programs have been implemented in North America — one involving nine northeastern states and another among California and the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario.
Hickenlooper is a part of the Climate Alliance, a coalition of 16 governors who have committed to work together toward meeting the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. But what initiatives Hickenlooper, who has reached his term limit and cannot run again in November, would be able to shepherd before he leaves office remains unclear.
In an interview following his speech, Hickenlooper characterized his role in the discussions as mostly "just listening," and he acknowledged that before any serious work could begin on adopting a carbon pricing regime, "we'd have to sit down with our legislature and our general assembly and really make sure that this is something that they would be willing to work with us on."
He noted that a potentially bigger hurdle would be changing the minds of opponents to clean energy and climate initiatives, particularly poorer communities, that fear they may be financially harmed by the efforts.
"We've really got to figure out how to address some of the issues that are keeping people from embracing these kinds of changes," he said. "Because in a purple state like Colorado, and I haven't gone out and tried to socialize it yet or talk about it, but I can imagine there'll be real resistance."
Hickenlooper in the past has said he is waiting until the end of his term before he will consider whether to run for Senate against Republican Cory Gardner or even for president in 2020.
