Climate team’s draft report identifies real solutions

After ten months of deliberation, the State Climate Advisory Team has issued a draft interim report containing key recommendations for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, creating new “green-collar” jobs and empowering local governments to build compact and transit oriented communities. 

Members of the state’s environmental community note that two of the four Priorities for a Healthy Washington bills for the upcoming legislative session directly address key elements of the Advisory Team’s recommendations: Climate Action and Green Jobs and Local Solutions to Global Warming.

The Department of Ecology’s press release on the draft report, with links to the report itself, is viewable here.

Early this year, Governor Chris Gregoire assembled the Climate Advisory Team, or “CAT,” to draw a road map for achieving her goals of reducing global warming pollution and tripling – to 25,000 – the number of “green collar” jobs in the state. The 25 CAT members -- along with numerous experts from business, utilities, agriculture, forestry, government, the clean-energy industry and the environmental community -- considered a broad range of ideas and concerns while developing initial recommendations.

Climate Action and Green Jobs, one of the 2008 Priorities for a Healthy Washington, addresses four of the key recommendations in the CAT draft report regarding the overall framework for Washington’s climate program. The bill would:

• Commit the state to a firm schedule for limiting global-warming pollution through a market based system – such as the “cap-and-trade” plan now being developed by Western U.S. states (including Washington), Mexican states and Canadian provinces.
• Require the comprehensive reporting of greenhouse-gas emissions needed to establish a baseline for future reductions.
• Support the creation of green-collar jobs by investing in worker training that builds the workforce needed for the burgeoning clean energy economy.
• Ensure the state has the resources it needs to continue to lead regionally and nationally.

 
“The Climate Advisory Team has recognized the need for strong state leadership to reduce our global- warming pollution and ensure Washington businesses and workers seize the historic opportunities presented by the clean energy revolution,” said Rod Brown, the Washington Environmental Council’s representative on the CAT. “We can’t just treat this as another report.  The challenge now is to roll up our sleeves and make sure that these recommendations result in concrete action.”

The other environmental community Priority that specifically addresses climate change, Local Solutions to Global Warming, would give cities and counties the support and flexibility they need to help reduce global warming pollution in the design of our communities and transportation systems. Since transportation is responsible for about half of Washington’s global-warming pollution, any comprehensive approach needs to address this sector.

Specifically, Local Solutions to Global Warming would:

• Add a goal to the Growth Management Act to reduce global-warming pollution and a climate element to the comprehensive planning process;
• Require large cities and counties develop plans to achieve the state’s global-warming pollution reduction goals in their comprehensive planning; evaluate current emissions and impacts of future decisions and; based on those evaluations, develop plans to manage growth in ways that will reduce global warming pollution.
• Be phased in with the next update cycle starting in 2011 (comprehensive plans are updated in cycles every seven years). In cases where cities or counties make major amendments to the Comprehensive plans before then the bill would kick in to effect. And obviously, cities and counties can opt-in earlier.
• Give local governments the flexibility to figure out what solutions work for them including options to encourage more compact development, create transit-oriented communities, and establish transfer of development rights programs. 

 
“The choices made in local land use and zoning plans about where a growing population will live and work and how they will get around have a huge impact on global warming emissions,” said Futurewise Acting Executive Director Aisling Kerins. “By making good decisions about how our neighborhoods, cities and counties grow we can reduce global warming pollution.”

The draft CAT recommendations also are reflected in two Incentives for Energy Efficiency proposals. One would allow buyers of high-efficiency appliances and equipment to pay no sales tax; the other would help state and local governments make their facilities use less energy. Another bill would commit the state to reducing vehicle miles traveled, or “VMT.” Decreasing per-capita VMT between now and 2050 emerged as a Climate Advisory Team priority for the transportation sector.

The CAT's draft interim report is now available for public comment until January 10, and the final report will be presented to Governor Gregoire on February 7, 2007.