Climate Change Comes To Pacific Northwest, Wears Flip-Flops

Yesterday, Thursday, King County hosted a climate change conference at Qwest Field, led by researchers from the University of Washington.

Ideological ostriches aside, the Pacific Northwest has good reason to sponsor its own research into climate change because (as the enviro-wonks over at Cascadia Scorecard note) we're warming up faster than the earth's rate of change as a whole, creating a possible marketing bonanza for casual, summery apparel providers.

The Seattle Times coverage lists some of the indicators of change we're already seeing, such as bark beetle populations exploding in warmer winters and destroying thousands of acres of trees. Oh, and that whole "no snow" thing last year.

The Seattle P-I story focuses more on the conference's doings and sayings, including this memorable line:

[Stanford University scientist] Schneider praised [Ron] Sims' kickoff speech calling for action now.

"It really is a pleasure to hear a person with the title 'executive' in a place called 'Washington' give such a speech."

Originally planned for attendance of 500, the event swelled to a capacity crowd of 700, which included ex-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, the keynote speaker. Her presence underscored what the Seattle Times called the "unmistakable political theme" of the conference: "The federal government isn't doing much to address climate change, so cities, counties and states should be preparing to go it alone."