Eugene weekly., January 28, 2016, Image 12

POLITICS
WILL OREGON’S
LEGISLATURE
STEP UP?
BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN
O
n Jan. 20, scientists from NASA and
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration announced 2015 as the hottest
year on record since record-keeping began in
1880.
Oregon itself experienced its hottest
year since the state's records began in 1895.
Phil Mote, director of the Oregon Climate
Change Research Institute, says the state’s
“average temperature in 2015 was 50.4
degrees, not only a record but far above the average yearly
temperature for the 20th century, which was 47.8 degrees.”
Mote attributes this to a combination of meteorological
conditions and greenhouse gases.
Globally, NASA says, the sea level rose about 6.7
inches in the last century. The top 2,300 feet of the ocean
has warmed by 0.302 degrees Fahrenheit since 1969.
Antarctica lost about 36 cubic miles of ice between 2002
and 2005.
Glaciers all over the planet are receding. Since the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the acidity of
surface ocean waters has increased by about 30 percent.
Finally, NASA research shows that “the number of
record high temperature events in the United States has been
increasing, while the number of record low temperature
events has been decreasing, since 1950. The U.S. has also
witnessed increasing numbers of intense rainfall events.”
A spate of warm weather on the East Coast was followed
by this month’s Snowzilla, burying Washington, D.C. and
other major East Coast cities under a blanket of snow.
Crocuses and other flowers are popping up in grassy areas
all around Eugene, and it’s 60 degrees outside. In January.
Global warming is a planetary issue with very local
repercussions, and Tom Bowerman of PolicyInteractive
research team says just picking away at pieces of the
problem is not enough. Comprehensive legislation is
needed to create change, and he hopes the Healthy Climate
Act will do just that.
The Oregon State Legislature’s upcoming short session
is not a place where you normally get big policy passed,
Bowerman says, but "the cost of delay is unacceptably
high." Kristin Eberhard of the Sightline Institute, who did
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January 28, 2016 • eugeneweekly.com
research on the Healthy Climate Act, says action on climate
change should have gotten under way 10 years ago.
The Healthy Climate Act is a “cap-and-invest” bill that
will actually move Oregon to a “statewide greenhouse gas
emissions limit for the year 2050 that limits greenhouse
gas emissions to levels that are at least 75 percent below
1990 levels.” In other words, Oregon would be calling a
halt to the steady slide of climate change.
Statewide, nationally and globally, action on climate
change is long overdue, and supporters of the HCA say the
time for Oregon to act is now. But the bill faces opposition
from the fossil fuel industry and the political process itself.
ALL IN FAVOR?
“Whereas climate change and ocean acidification
caused by greenhouse gas emissions threaten to have
significant detrimental effects on public health and the
economic vitality, natural resources and environment of
this state.”
So reads the prospective text of the Healthy Climate
Act, which State Sen. Chris Edwards plans to put forth
in the February short session of the Oregon Legislature.
As those who have long been in the fight to stop climate
change can attest, it’s not easy to get things done in
government. It’s even harder when you’re up against big
money, misinformation and Big Oil. But public health,
natural resources and the economy are some of what’s at
stake.
Oregon has already passed legislation on greenhouse
gas emissions. Back in 2007, the Legislature voted to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions 10 percent below 1990
levels by 2020 and 75 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
But as Bowerman says in frustration, those reductions have
no teeth; they were merely goals and nonbinding.
Bowerman and others tried to get legislation passed
in the regular 2015 session, but even on urgent issues
Oregon’s government can be slow moving. Bowerman says
he looked at 19 pieces of legislation dealing with climate
in that session and was “disappointed” because each had
constitutional, performance or political viability issues.
Bowerman put his research into Oregon House Bill
3470 — the Climate Stability & Justice Act of 2015 —
which would have committed Oregon to meeting its
existing, scientifically based, climate pollution limits. All
the other bills fell by the wayside and Bowerman was
hopeful HB 3470 would pass, but a transportation funding
bill “took up all the oxygen in the room.”
The current bill, the Healthy Climate Act, is backed both
by the research of Bowerman’s PolicyInteractive and by
that of nonprofit research center Sightline Institute. In the
Legislature it’s sponsored by Sen. Edwards as well as by
Sen. Lee Beyer, chair of the Business and Transportation
committee. The HCA had its first hearing on Jan. 14 in the
legislative committee days that precede the session in a joint
meeting of the Senate Environment and Natural Resources
and House Energy and Environment committees.
The bill does not yet have a number, and its text is still
in flux; however, its end goals remain clear. It calls on the
Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to limit
climate pollution and create a market-based program to
meet those limits.
According to Edwards, it is a “cap-and-invest”
approach that “would cap greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions through the auction of allowances by the state to
emitting entities. The proceeds from the sale of allowances
will be invested in utility bill rate relief, GHG reduction,
and community and economic adaptation and resilience to
climate change.”
Basically, polluters such as facilities or companies
emitting more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide a
year are given a cap on what they can emit. Anything above
that cap and they must buy allowances, sold at auction by
the DEQ. The money paid by the polluting industries is then
invested back into reducing greenhouse gas emissions or,
Edwards says, “investments that will increase community
and economic resistance in face of climate change.”
Over time, the state would slowly decrease the number
of allowances auctioned off each year, reducing their
supply and increasing their cost and thus incentivizing
companies to reduce emissions.
Supporters say that capping carbon pollution reduces
the risk of heat-related illness and death, pollution-induced
asthma and the spread of disease. The young, the elderly
I L L U S T R AT I O N S F O R E U G E N E W E E K LY B Y J E N S I N E E C K WA L L
CLIMATE