28 United States The EconomistJuly 22nd 2017
2 one. “I am ashamed that my taxpayer dol-
lars are being used for such purposes,” says
another. A Californian applauds his state’s
decision to refuse to comply with the com-
mission’s request: “your lack of integrity
and refusal to acknowledge basic facts un-
dermines our democracy.”
The commission has temporarily halt-
ed its request for information. Mr Kobach
says he now intends to try to persuade the
states that refused to comply with his re-
quest. He says that he only asked for infor-
mation that is publicly available, so states
can leave blank whatever data is private in
their jurisdiction. He admits that he should
have made clear that the information will
be destroyed once the commission finish-
es its work. He also insists thatthe much-
maligned commission isin fact bipartisan.
It is led by two Republicans and consists of
seven Republicans (four of them promi-
nent proponents of the voter-fraud story,
such as Hans von Spakovsky, a lawyer)
and five hitherto obscure Democrats.
Despite the setbacks, voting-rights ac-
tivists remain deeply concerned about the
commission. “It is still a dangerous vehicle
for voter suppression,” says Vanita Gupta,
a former head of the Department of Jus-
tice’s civil-rights division. In Colorado
more than 3,000 voters worried about the
data requests have already withdrawn
their registration. Thousands more could
drop off the electoral rolls. Mr Kobach
hopes to nationalise his Interstate Voter
Registration Crosscheck Programme,
which brings 27 Republican states together
in Kansas to compare voter rolls, says Ms
Gupta. Such a matching programme ap-
pears to be a reasonable exercise, but a re-
cent study by Stanford University found
that Mr Kobach’s programme had 200 false
positives for every double voting-registra-
tion. Most ofthe false alarms were minor-
ities because, according to census data,
those with names such as Hernandez, Gar-
cia or Kim are over-represented in the most
common last names.
The fate of the commission will be im-
portant for Mr Kobach’s political future,
too. He is running for governorof Kansas
next year, hoping to replace Sam Brown-
back, the staggeringly unpopular Republi-
can governor who recently made head-
lines when his experiments with deep tax
cuts were ended by lawmakers from his
own party. “I am not Brownback’s political
heir,” says Mr Kobach. He agrees with his
tax cuts but he would have combined
them with more cuts in spending. He is
also more pro-gun than the governor, he
says, and more hardline on immigration,
promising to end sanctuary policies in
Kansas. According to Kansas Speaks, a re-
cent opinion survey by the Fort Hays State
University, Mr Kobach has the highest
name recognition of nine of the state’s
prominent politicians—but he also re-
ceived the lowest rating. 7V
OTING to extend California’s cap-and-
trade programme an extra decade to
2030 was a tough decision for Devon Ma-
this, a Republican assemblyman who rep-
resents a large swathe of the state’s fertile
Central Valley. Though once embraced by
Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and
George W. Bush, cap-and-trade schemes
have come to be seen by Republicans as ex-
emplifying government overreach. On the
other hand, agricultural business owners
in Mr Mathis’s district flooded him with
letters in support of cap-and-trade, which
they thought would be better than the
state’s alternative plans for reducing CO 2
emissions. Mr Mathis was so torn about
the choice he sought out his pastor to pray
about it. On July 17th when the vote was
held, he opted to support the extension.
Cap-and-trade programmes work by
setting a limit (or cap) on how much CO 2
individual companies can emit. Business-
es that pollute less than the cap can sell (or
trade) their excess allowance to those that
pollute more. The roots of California’s
scheme, which is the world’s third largest
after the European Union’s and South Ko-
rea’s, go back to 2006, when Assembly Bill
32 (AB32) was passed. In that measure, leg-
islators committed to cutting California’s
greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by
2020—a reduction of roughly 30%, to 431m
metric tonnes ofemissions. To meet that
goal, the state’s Air Resources Board (ARB)pushed a number of initiatives that includ-
ed a cap-and-trade programme, which it
implemented in early 2013.
Since it is relatively new, distinguishing
the impact of California’s cap-and-trade
programme from its other initiatives on
greenhouse gases is difficult. California
also has a Low Carbon Fuel Standard,
which requires petroleum producers to re-
duce the share of CO 2 in their fuels, and an
Advanced Clean Cars Programme, a pack-
age of regulations to reduce pollution from
cars. The Environmental Defence Fund, a
charity, estimated in 2011 that cap-and-
trade would account for 20% of the pollu-
tion cuts required byAB32.
Altogether, the state is making progress.
State-wide emissions peaked in 2004 and
have since declined by 10%. The ARBfound
that greenhouse-gas emissions fell by 1.5m
metric tonnes between 2014 and 2015,
which is equivalent to removing 300,000
vehicles from California’s (often congest-
ed) roads for a year.
Last yearthe Democratic-dominated
legislature set a more demanding emis-
sions reduction target: 40% below 1990 lev-
els by 2030. Cap-and-trade is seen as the
key to reaching that, but before this week’s
vote its future was uncertain. Over the past
four years the ARBhas faced several law-
suits over cap-and-trade. Plaintiffs in the
suits argue the system functions as a tax.
Since it was not approved by two-thirds of
the state legislature—the legal threshold for
creating new taxes in California—they
claim it is unconstitutional.
California’s state government has so far
prevailed in court. But to quash such dis-
putes for good Jerry Brown, California’s
governor, needed to convince a superma-
jority of legislators (two-thirds) to extend
cap-and-trade to 2030. In the run up to the
vote, Mr Brown gave a typically Brownian
speech to a state Senate committee: “What
am I? 79? Do I have five years more?” he
shouted. “This isn’t for me. I’m gonna be
dead. It’s for you and it’s damn real.”
Mr Mathis was one ofeight Republican
state legislators to support the cap-and-
trade extension, giving the measure its
two-thirds majority. Such bipartisan col-
laborations are rare—especially on climate-
change, over which the electorate is starkly
divided. A survey published by Pew Re-
search Centre in October 2016 suggested
that only 18% of conservative Republicans
believe climate scientists understand
“very well” whether climate change is oc-
curring, compared with 68% of liberal
Democrats. While these divisions persist
in the Golden State, there is broader sup-
port overall for climate policies, says Mark
Baldassare, the president of the Public Poli-
cy Institute of California, a think-tank.
When he polled Californians in July 2016,
81% of adults saw global warming as a
“very” or “somewhat” serious threat to the
state’s economy and quality of life. 7CaliforniaParis-on-sea
LOS ANGELES
The Golden State pushes on with plans
to reduce greenhouse-gas emissionsLA’s trading floor