State looks to lead way on climate change

Our views

The Olympian • Published February 06, 2008

• Comments (0)

Productive year

The Climate Advisory Action Team has had a productive year, agreeing to a list of 47 recommendations, but narrowing that to just a handful of broad public policy areas. According to Wilkerson and Manning, the team is recommending a focus on four areas where significant environmental achievements are realistic: transportation, forest practices, waste management, and energy consumption in homes and businesses.

In many ways, Washington state already is a leader. Take recycling, for instance. About 50 percent of Washington’s waste is recycled, making the state a leader on the national scene. But as Manning notes, there still are great savings to be achieved through recycling and repackaging efforts.

Studies by the state Energy Policy Office documented that the number of clean-energy jobs more than doubled from 1998 to 2004. Those jobs, in such fields as energy efficiency, renewable energy and smart-energy technology, totaled 8,400 by 2004 with an average salary of $60,000, studies say.

Yet the goal of the action team is to create 25,000 more green jobs by 2020, according to Wilkerson.

She and Manning said the 27 members of the team came into the process a year ago seeing themselves as individual advisors. After a year of hard work, they are united as a team, fully supportive of the climate change agenda.

True test

But the next year will be the true test as the team formulates concrete plans on how to achieve the recommended goals.

For example, are motorists ready for toll roads? How about new energy-efficient building standards that will drive up the costs of new homes and businesses? What should the state do with TransAlta, the coal fired plant near Centralia which is the largest, single-point source of carbon-dioxide emissions in Washington?

These are tough questions which will lead to tough decisions involving mountains of money.

But Manning is right when he says, “The cost of inaction dwarfs the cost of action.”