New state agency could meet urgent need for climate action
Gov. Kate Brown announced this week a major step toward reducing climate impacts with a proposal to create the Oregon Climate Authority after a year of harmful wildfires, algae blooms and a steady flow of alarming reports by scientists and federal agencies.
Without a doubt, climate change is one of Oregon’s most urgent issues of 2018. The agency would help the state better prepare for the ever-changing impacts across our land and water, while helping to promote a clean-energy economy to benefit all of our communities.
The Oregon Climate Authority would significantly elevate climate change in state government and make the state the first in the country to create an agency solely dedicated to solving one of this generation’s greatest challenges. It would be charged with overseeing and coordinating programs, such as the proposed cap-and-invest that creates Clean Energy Jobs, and it would measure progress towards meeting our climate targets.
Why the need? Some of the most alarming impacts include the weeks of harmful exposure to wildfire smoke endured by Oregonians throughout the state. And in addition of dealing with the smoke exposure, Oregonians have to foot a $514 million price tag to fight the blazes this season, up from $447 million in 2017. Salem’s drinking water turned undrinkable this year because of toxic algae blooms spurred by warm weather, and Prairie City ran out of water altogether because of drought.
Just last week, the National Climate Assessment—published by 13 federal agencies—revealed that Oregon’s natural resource industry alone has 256,423 jobs at risk from climate disruption. And that’s just one of many impacts found in the report’s Pacific Northwest Chapter. Weeks before the assessment, the world’s top climate experts also sounded the alarm saying we have a mere decade to dramatically cut emissions. The United Nations published this week yet another report showing countries are woefully behind their commitments made in Paris three years ago.
For more than a decade, our journey to reach our state’s ambitious climate goals has been hindered by a lack of necessary tools needed to get there. We have seen little accountability, and we wholeheartedly agree with Gov. Brown that it’s time to take emission reductions seriously.
In conjunction with the Clean Energy Jobs bill, a new Oregon Climate Authority has the potential to create the framework for reaching those goals and attracting even more talent and expertise to tackle this challenge. We need the nation’s best professionals fighting the negative impacts brought by climate change to work alongside our hard-working experts that already serve in our state government.
We applaud the hard work accomplished by the Oregon Department of Energy over its 43-year history. The agency has worked to keep so many homes and businesses warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and we’re grateful for its historic impact.
Click here to access the Governor’s Office report, which outlines the strategy for climate change and her plans to protect the land that we love from pollution and other negative impacts. Below is an eight-step summary to her plan:
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Building Climate Resilience with Better Buildings
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Diane Hodiak
November 30, 2018 (1:53 am)
Governor Brown Oregon finally has a great leader willing to take bold action on climate change. Let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work passing the Clean Energy Jobs bill.
Belinda S. Colley
November 30, 2018 (2:20 am)
I would love to see something that addresses the recycling problem we are having today due to China’s ceasing to accept our plastics. Here in Douglas County they discontinued ALL recycling, not just plastic. I can’t for the life of me think of a good reason for this as glass, aluminum and tin, and paper is easily recycled. I think our Country Commissioners are just lazy and don’t want to do their job in finding new (or old, as the case may be) companies that recycle. Can this please be added to your agenda?
Dirk
December 29, 2018 (6:04 pm)
I was surprised to not see Governor Brown’s EO 17-20 listed as well. It’s kind of a big deal.
Greg Pettit
January 8, 2019 (6:45 pm)
Oregon needs to take a strong stand in opposing the exportation of fossil fuels and in particular tar sands crude oil from Oregon ports. The extraction, processing, transportation and use of tar sands crude has a tremendous adverse impact on our climate producing three times the amount of green house gases as conventional crude oil production. As a state we are trying to lead the way on supporting green technologies and reduce carbon pollution. Yet the Port of St. Helens recently approved changes to agreements with Global Partners that paves the way for the use of Port Westward on the lower Columbia River to receive 34 mile long trains a month of tar sands oil (dilbit), and ship it to Asian markets. This will not only create tremendous safety and environmental risk, it is completely inconsistent with Oregon’s efforts to address climate change.