What gets measured gets managed

Wow, I just read that Bay Area pollution regulators have proposed to charge companies a fee for each ton of greenhouse gases that they emit! On the surface this may not sound all that groundbreaking, but it absolutely is. Consider that until now all efforts to regulate emissions have been voluntary. If this proposal passes, it would be the first legally mandated regulation in the U.S. which would result in financial consequences for greenhouse gas emitters. Apparently the air district, which is a state agency, is expected to vote on the proposal in May.

The proposed fee is small - only 4.2 cents per ton of greenhouse gas - because it's designed to fund the cost of the Bay Area's global warming reduction programs. In other words, it's not intended to offset the actual "cost" of the greenhouse gases.

But isn't that the next obvious step? And doesn't this mean that virtually all emissions will need to be measured and audited? And once there's a reliable or at least accepted system for measurement, shouldn't we assume that further "management" of these emissions will occur? This sounds to me like the first step in what will be a long (yet inevitable) series of steps towards the political portion of the global warming solution.

It's taken a bit of time, but it appears that government is now joining consumers and businesses in recognizing that they have a role to play if we're going to address global warming as well as the multitude of other environmental challenges that we face.