Five western states - Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona and New Mexico will jointly set standards and develop solutions for dealing with climate change. The five governors signed the Western Regional Climate Action Initiative, which was initiated by (my state of ) Oregon.

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongski said the agreement "sends a message to Congress and the White House that if they fail to enact policies at the national level to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and do our nation's part to combat global warming -- that states will do it on our own."

While we can rightfully criticize the executive and legislative branches for being asleep at the wheel on climate change, in reality, the states know better how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while increasing economic opportunity on a regional level.

If the federal government passes laws or regulations about carbon caps or renewable portfolio standards, the likelihood of waste of taxpayer funds is higher, and states would not benefit proportionally from the funding. Each state has a different set of contributors to emissions (local utilities) and has a different set of solutions that can be used to address the problem (eg. wind power in Arizona or hydro power in Oregon).

States can more effectively develop incentives and grants for the local companies that will create jobs and increase energy efficiency. It is encouraging that states in the west and northeast have banded together to take on climate change.

Federal legislation -- be it for energy, environment, or anything else -- inevitably includes pet "pork" projects that waste tax payer dollars, so having states set the rules would be more cost effective. Federal money is best used in developing new technologies for reducing emissions through it's national laboratories, and that practice should continue.

Am I being naive in looking for the silver lining in the federal government's inaction?

Most sustainability decisions include some kind of tradeoff. On the one hand, reading magazine or newspaper articles online reduces the use of paper, but increases the amount of electricity consumed, which often requires burning more coal or natural gas. The companies that build the software, chips and servers that run the Web are getting together to reduce the amount of energy that networks consume.

Intel has joined with AMD, Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM and Sun Microsystems to collaborate in a non-profit energy-efficiency group called The Green Grid, according to the Oregonian.

For e-commerce, media, or any type of company that requires substantial computer power to store and share data, the cost of electricity is of considerable concern. It's a good signe that some of the most important industry players are going to share technology for managing power consumption. Just as with any type of appliance, powering down servers or networking equipment when it is not needed can substantially lower one's electricity bill. And since Web servers need to keep going 24/7, improvements in servers' energy efficiency can lead to substantial savings.