Explain the pause on a key climate-change bill

AFTER years of steady progress on goals of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, the Washington State Legislature is blinking in the face of legislation sought by Gov. Christine Gregoire to make good intentions enforceable.

Until now, Washington has played a creative role in a movement — in the absence of federal leadership — to deal with climate change at the state level through regional compacts.

The governor's requested legislation was watered down in the Senate, and a companion measure died in the House. The Senate bill that survives as a second substitute version — three tries.

If the Legislature, with the acquiescence of Gregoire, has lost faith in the concept of controlling greenhouse-gas emissions, admit it. If everyone is spooked by the economy, say so. If a credible argument can be made that more time is needed to create an administrative template for the market-based cap-and-trade plan and acquaint industry with it, please say so.

The governor and Legislature need to signal their intent and articulate their will to implement pollution limits and set a date to get started. As re-imagined, the state gets going with voluntary annual targets and voluntary participation. Is that it, or a longer trial run to get the paperwork sorted out?

In recent years, the Legislature made great strides on green construction standards, promotion of green jobs, cleaner auto-emission standards for new cars, green recycling, support for locally grown food in school menus and, this session, promoting energy efficiency in public buildings.

Work on greenhouse-gas emissions is complicated, and the complexity grows as goals turn into enforceable standards. But past legislation anticipated those pathways and consultations with the Legislature before a full debut in 2012.

For environmental proponents, limits on greenhouse-gas emissions are a step toward ending expensive fossil-fuel dependency. They argue caps create incentives to change practices, and they lead to creation of replacement jobs and reduced pollution.

The trade element comes from legislated allowances to pollute that can be bought or sold. This is hardly new ground. States coping with coal-fired plants have had a cap-and-trade market in sulfur dioxide emissions for a decade. States in the Northeast opened a trading system last fall. Washington is part of a Western consortium working on a variety of climate-change responses.

If Washington's economy is perceived to be too vulnerable to move ahead, the governor and legislative leaders need to say so. Is more time needed to perfect a workable plan, or is this a big step backward?