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BY ALAN PITTMAN
Investing Locally
Since 1969
Inconvenient Truth
City barely supports carbon reduction
I
n its fi rst concrete action to fi ght global
warming, the Eugene City Council
voted to support a proposed anti-
carbon bill in the state Legislature. Barely.
The 4-4 tie vote on the council was
broken by Mayor Kitty Piercy in favor of
actually doing something about climate
change. The vote was to tentatively support
the legislation if it’s amended to address
concerns about city costs, local input and
dispute mediation.
The legislation, an amendment to
House Bill 2001 backed by 1000 Friends
of Oregon and other state environmental
groups, would require large metro areas in
Oregon to amend local transportation and
land use plans to address state greenhouse
emission reduction goals. Whether the
legislation actually forces reductions in
global warming would apparently depend
on how it’s enforced.
The
Legislature
previously
set
aspirational goals to work towards reducing
1990 greenhouse gas emission levels by
75 percent by 2050. About half of local
greenhouse pollution is from cars.
Councilors Betty Taylor, Alan Zelenka,
George Brown and Andrea Ortiz voted in
support of the global warming legislation.
Councilors Chris Pryor, Mike Clark,
Jennifer Solomon and George Poling
opposed the legislation.
Clark, who has expressed doubt that
humans have caused global warming, said
the planning requirement “is going to divert
monies” from road funding.
Solomon complained the state bill is
“taking away our local control.”
Pryor, the PR person for Springfi eld’s
Willamalane Park district, said Eugene
should join Springfi eld in opposing the
effort to reduce global warming. A vote to
do that failed 5-4 along the same lines.
“This amendment is exactly what we
need to be doing,” said Zelenka. “We are
woefully behind.”
The Obama administration took action
this week to set tough new car mileage
and emission standards, and Congress is
moving forward on a cap-and-trade system
for industrial sources to reduce global
warming.
Substitute legislation proposed by
Springfi eld would be “making it so squishy
that it has no teeth at all,” Zelenka said.
Zelenka pointed out that the local
Metropolitan Policy Committee has already
voted this month to consider greenhouse
emissions in transportation plans. “We’re
doing almost exactly this.”
“It would be really bad and opposed of all
our values and standards if we don’t support
it,” said Taylor of the global warming bill.
Ortiz, a Whitaker-area councilor
who’s swung between conservatives and
progressives on the council, initially
appeared against the environmental
legislation. “I didn’t want to support it,”
she said. But she voted for it after Piercy
spoke.
“Now is the time you have to address
greenhouse gases,” Piercy said.
The city’s lobbyist Brenda Wilson said
she expects the greenhouse amendment
to be included in the large transportation
bill moving through the Legislature.
But she told the council that the climate
amendment may be changed to only apply
to Portland.
Wilson told the council the entire
transportation bill may be ultimately
defeated because it includes a gas tax
increase. “I believe that bill will be referred
to the voters and there will be a subsequent
fi ght.”
It’s also unclear whether powerful city
of Eugene staff will subvert any council or
state effort to reduce global warming locally.
The city planning, transportation and public
works departments and city attorney argued
against the bill to reduce global warming.
City transportation planning manager
Rob Inerfeld argued the city should only
support climate change legislation if
compliance is optional. “This bill will
just add another layer to our work,” he
complained in a memo.
Eugene principal planner Steve Nystrom
wrote that he opposed reducing sprawl to
address global warming. “There are some
fairly loaded words in this bill that clearly
raise the stakes on accommodating more
dense communities,” the planner wrote.
Public Works PR person Eric Jones
predicted “some real pushback from” city
staff if funds are diverted from roads to
reducing global warming.
A decade ago, Eugene city staff joined
anti-environmental groups in a successful
effort to thwart a previous state effort to
reduce car pollution, the Transportation
Planning Rule, by lobbying for weaker
regulations.
Only Felicity Fahy, the New Zealander
recently hired to work as the city’s
sustainability manager, expressed support
for the city actually doing something to
control global warming.
Fahy noted that unlike the state bill,
other aspirational city efforts lack “teeth”
and have no mandates that they actually
reduce global warming. She wrote: “We
need to build these requirements into all
our land use, transportation, infrastructure,
etc. planning and take action as soon as
possible.”
ew
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EUGENE WEEKLY MAY 21 2009 9