No meaningful progress on an international climate change treaty was made at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. Key members of the U.S. Senate now predict that cap-and-trade won’t see the light of day this election year, either. But in our state capitols, proponents of carbon regulation are plowing ahead.

At the end of 2009, 11 northeastern states committed to develop a low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) for their region. These states make up the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which has already imposed a cap-and-trade program for electric utilities. The result: these states have the highest retail electric rates in the country. Now they want to create an LCFS, which will drive up gasoline and diesel costs for consumers.

Not to be outdone, the Midwest Governors Association has made design recommendations for a cap-and-trade system and is preparing recommendations for an LCFS for the six states participating in its Greenhouse Gas Emissions Accord. Meanwhile, Minnesota and Michigan have introduced LCFS legislation, while Wisconsin is set to begin debating an Omnibus Climate Change bill.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Western states are pursuing similar policies on a regional level and individually. Oregon passed LCFS legislation last year and now Washington is also considering establishing one.

And then there is California, the state responsible for developing these questionable policies. California’s LCFS goes into effect next year and its cap-and-trade program starts in 2012. Those two policies are the flagship programs for The Golden State’s climate change efforts and the success or failure of these actions in California will influence state-level activity across the country.

Other states should be wary of following California’s lead. California has proven to be a shining example of fiscal mismanagement, and is well on its way to legislating itself into junk bond status. Many of the impending climate regulations in that state are causing manufacturers to seriously consider closing shop for good or relocating their operations. In order to prevent further harm to the economy, one California state legislator is currently getting signatures to put an initiative on the ballot for the next election that would bar the state’s cap-and-trade program from going into effect until the state’s unemployment rate dips below 5.5 percent (the state’s unemployment rate is currently 12.3 percent, third highest in the country).

China and India made it clear in Copenhagen that they have no intention of committing to binding emission reductions. They would not even agree to international monitoring, reporting and verification of their emissions.

Most states are facing continued budget deficits and high unemployment. Climate policies that make businesses less competitive with other regions of the country and — more importantly — the world won’t help the situation. We need to make sure our state leaders understand that piecemeal policy is bad policy.

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The outcome in Copenhagen is also going to make it very hard for Senate Democrats, particularly those from Midwestern manufacturing states, to vote for anything that resembles the House bill.  Considering China had little interest in even talking to our president in Copenhagen, those senators should be wary of voting for any bill that will send jobs in their states overseas.  That is exactly what cap-and-trade will do.

Just as the Kyoto Accord should be torn up and a whole new approach developed, the same can be said of climate legislation before Congress.  While we have been busy debating climate bills, China and India’s economies have continued to grow.  China has spent the last year buying up energy and mineral resources around the world, including the Canadian oil sands.  Meanwhile, we engage in a completely pointless either/or debate about energy.  If we don’t wake up, we will find our energy security severely compromised in the not-to-distant future.

We need to refocus the U.S. debate so that it is about energy security and independence and how best to drive the technology needed to achieve both. The discussion needs to recognize the need for more nuclear power, the important role fossil fuels will continue to play, the need for economically sustainable renewable energy, and how to best drive energy efficiency.  Greenhouse gas emission reductions will be a byproduct of this effort.

We will need all of these approaches to meet our future energy needs and increase our energy security.  We cannot continue to delude ourselves into thinking one or two technologies alone will make the difference.  The time to change the conversation is now, before it is too late.

The U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen ended early this morning with delegates voting to “take note” of an agreement brokered by the U.S. that essentially establishes a system for third party verification of emissions and aid to developing countries. The final agreement did not establish binding emission reduction targets or even set a timeline for their completion. The vote to simply “take note of” – as opposed to approving – the agreement severely undercuts efforts by the Obama Administration to spin the agreement yesterday as unprecedented.

The Administration and other governments would be far better off being honest and admitting that the U.N. process is a failure that no amount of future talks can salvage. As noted in previous posts, the impasse is largely attributed to differences between developed and developing countries and the expectations for each under a new treaty.  My main take away from this conference is that the U.N. process has simply become a forum for developing nations to extort money from developed nations under the guise of environmental protection and for traders who want to make millions of dollars in a new carbon market.

The president once again wasted an enormous amount of political capital for very little result. This agreement could have been hammered out by the Secretary of State and other foreign ministers while leaving the heads of state at home.  Much of the stalemate came down to differences between the U.S. and China on issues like binding reductions, emissions verification and money.  As this quote from the New York Times illustrates, the president is far more interested in a deal than the Chinese Premier: “Twice during the day, [Chinese Premier] Wen sent an underling to represent him at the meetings with Mr. Obama. To make things worse, each time it was a lower-level official.”  The president needs to become a better negotiator with China on a whole range of issues.

The U.S. did float some interesting ideas over the two weeks to make China, India and other rapidly developing countries more accountable. One idea is to establish a new category of countries that captures this group and would not exempt them from making required reductions. This is crucial now that China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions. Another is to demand third party verification, which was part of the final agreement though questions remain as to whether it will have enough teeth to be effective.

The president interrupted a meeting of the leaders from China, India, Brazil and South Africa to finally get his audience with Mr. Wen. While it is embarrassing they started without him, this meeting may offer a path to a future agreement and exerting leadership. Ever since the Kyoto Protocol established different expectations for developed and developing countries, true progress on global greenhouse gas emissions reductions has been difficult.  As I have said, Kyoto is broken and using its framework to craft a successor agreement will be a failure, as these talks have illustrated.  It may make more sense for the leaders of the top ten emitting countries, which account for approximately 70 percent of global emissions, to work out an agreement.

A new direction is required for any international treaty to be effective. A new agreement has to recognize the changes that have taken place since 1997.  With the United Nations predicting that two-thirds of the expected growth in emissions between now and 2030 will come from developing countries, exempting these countries from mandatory reductions makes no sense.  And any agreement should be about the environment and not redistributing money to other countries and Wall Street.

Like the short leash they have given protesters here, security is paramount at the Bella Center.  Your only chance to get within a 1000 yards of the facility is to hold a UN-issued badge.  But sometimes that isn’t even good enough.

Would you believe that people who went through the rigors of getting entrance badges, traveled thousands of miles and spent a fortune to attend,  have been turned away at the gates?

As it turns out, thousands of badge-holders have been denied access to the climate change summit this past week, because over 40,000 badges were issued for a facility that holds only 15,000.

I personally know of visitors who spent hours in line never to be admitted to the Bella Center.

Call me crazy, but I’m wondering how  an organization that can’t even count heads for a conference is going to be able to orchestrate a complex  international involving nearly 200 countries?