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Climate report has bleak outlook

Forecast includes worse heat waves, air quality, heavy rain

By John Dodge | The Olympian • Published February 12, 2009

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More people likely will die from heat waves and poor air quality in the Puget Sound region in the years ahead, the result of climate change, according to a report released Wednesday by the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group.

The team of scientists was commissioned in 2007 by the state Legislature to look at climate-change effects. It also paints a sobering picture of increased heavy rain in Western Washington in the winter, more forest fires and reduced stream flows in the summer, and water shortages in the agriculturally rich Yakima Valley Basin.

"The impacts they project are downright scary," state Department of Ecology Director Jay Manning said. "Climate change is the biggest, long-term threat we face in the state."

The release of the report comes as lawmakers are locked in a partisan debate over the pros and cons of a bill to launch a cap-and-trade program to better control greenhouse-gas emissions from industry and utilities.

The bill has the support of Gov. Chris Gregoire, many fellow Democrats, environmentalists and the clean-energy economic sector as the state's best chance to stave off environmental damage from global-warming gases and wean itself off a fossil fuel-based economy.

But House Bill 1819 faces stiff opposition from many businesses and Republicans who say the current economic crisis is no time to force polluters to invest in greenhouse-gas reductions.

"Every dollar we spend on this is one more dollar we don't have to spend on energy investments," said Llewellyn Matthews, executive director of the Northwest Pulp and Paper Association.

The cap-and-trade program would begin in 2012, reducing greenhouse gas emissions statewide to 1990 levels by 2020.

Manning agreed that the bill faces rough sledding as it approaches a House committee vote next week.

"We are going to come out of this recession," he said. "Making things worse is the last thing the governor wants to do."

The report by the Climate Impact Group suggests there is little time to waste. Some of the projections include:

• An additional 101 deaths among people 45 and older in King County during heat waves in 2025.

• A decline in apple and cherry yields of 20 percent or more in the 2020s in the Yakima Valley because of reduced water supplies.

• A 400 percent increase in the demand for energy for cooling in the summer by 2040.

• A reduction in the statewide, early-spring snowpack of 30 percent by the 2020s and 65 percent by the 2080s.

• A doubling of areas burned by wildfires by the 2040s and a tripling of area by the 2080s.

John Dodge covers the environment and energy for The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-754-5444 or jdodge@theolympian.com.