This Article explores the potential for such agreements to address climate change on a regional level by analyzing the parallels between the agreements, the nature and limits of the executive power used to create them, and the scope of enforcement available under them. Section II briefly examines the present state of climate warming and its attendant impacts, while Section III highlights the relative failure of current national and international approaches to mitigating climate change. Section IV focuses on the recent rise of environmental regional agreements in the United States, specifically those agreements to which the State of New York has been integral. Section V then explores how the use of executive authority by the Governor of New York has engendered limited success—primarily through the greenhouse gas reductions committed to and realized—in these agreements. The Article concludes by considering the way these achievements can serve as examples for the creation of a federal or, ideally, international agreement to combat climate change.
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