City Light can't buy pollution "offsets," court says.

Byline: Warren Cornwall

Jan. 19--The campaign to reduce Seattle's contribution to global warming suffered a blow Thursday when the state Supreme Court declared that the city couldn't tack on charges to electric bills to pay for the effort. The court, in a 5-to-4 decision, rejected a Seattle City Light program to compensate for its own emissions of greenhouse gases by paying other agencies and companies to pollute less. These "offsets" represent roughly one-fifth of the greenhouse-gas reductions Seattle needs to meet the goals in the international Kyoto treaty on climate change. Mayor Greg Nickels has made global warming a high priority for his administration, mounting a much-publicized campaign to get U.S. cities to promise to meet the Kyoto …