E2 Round-up: States urge delay on climate regs as Farm Bureau fights federal 'power grab'

State regulators want the Obama administration to slow down its push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in some cases echoing concerns voiced by business groups like the American Petroleum Institute, in the Wall Street Journal. Some state officials fear carbon regulations could slow down construction projects. Others worry the federal effort could interfere with their own programs to curb carbon dioxide emissions.

Given the failure at Copenhagen to reach a global agreement to lower greenhouse gas emissions, Congress may set the cap-and-trade bill aside and try to tackle the problem with less sweeping measures like a renewable portfolio standard. At least that’s the thinking of Michael Morris, the CEO of American Electric Power, one of the country’s biggest emitters of carbon dioxide. But Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund said a price on carbon is a key to spurring the development of green jobs, also in the WSJ.

Speaking on the climate change legislation, the Farm Bureau is still opposed to it, in ClimateWire, which you can see at the New York Times. President Bob Stallman called the climate bill a federal "power grab." 

Some of the waste from the natural gas drilling boom in Pennsylvania may end up in Ohio, which is why the state legislature is considering taxing the brine that companies dump in designated areas in the Buckeye state, from the Columbus Dispatch.

And the United Kingdom is on pace to meet its aggressive emissions reductions targets, but only because of the recession, the longest in the country’s history, Bloomberg reports. A member of the panel said the U.K. should continue to push for a global commitment to reduce greenhouse gases and increase its own targets, which is now a 34 percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2020.