States More Open To Change Than Fed?

[Annie]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070226/sc_nm/renewable_energy_usa_dc

States beat Washington to renewable energy

By Deborah ZabarenkoMon Feb 26, 3:57 AM ET

In Texas, home to some of the world's biggest oil companies, you might think the case for renewable energy would be tough to make. As it happened it was tough, but not impossible.

It was simply a case of showing that technologies like massive wind turbines and solar roof shingles would do the job with costs that were in line with power generated from fossil fuel, said Jim Marston, of the Texas office of Environmental Defense, an advocacy group.

Texas is one of more than 20 states which, lacking a lead from central government in Washington and spurred by mounting evidence of the threat of global warming, have pressed ahead with their own measures to boost renewable energy use and curb emissions of carbon dioxide, held largely responsible for pushing up world temperatures.

President George W. Bush, having rejected the ground-breaking Kyoto Protocol on curbing carbon dioxide on the ground that the U.S. economy could not afford it, in January acknowledged the challenge of climate change in his State of the Union address and spoke of new technologies and alternative fuels as possible solutions.

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