California's preliminary 'cap and trade' plan is due today

The state Air Resources Board today plans to unveil a preliminary draft of the nation's first "cap and trade" program for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. The release will lay out a framework for the plan, but will leave many key details to be decided over the coming year, an agency spokesman said. The system is scheduled to take effect in 2012. The emissions-trading market is among the most controversial strategies the state is employing to meet the requirements of Assembly Bill 32, California's 2006 omnibus global-warming law. Predictably, industry and environmental groups disagree over how the plan ought to be designed. But the proposal also has opened fissures within the environmental community.