Happy Birthday Kyoto -- We Forgot To Get You Anything

Sightline's Eric de Place celebrated his own private Kyoto on Friday by congratulating the region for their collective environmental work. British Columbia, which has been slow to catch up with even the rest of Canada, has finally been pushed in the right direction by the Prime Minister's recent green initiative talk. Oregon's governor Ted Kulongoski has recently said that he wants the state to become the "clean energy capital of the nation" and released an action plan that focuses on renewable energy sources, biofuels, conservation and tax credits for investors supporting renewable energy. All great stuff.

Eric and others have expressed a little frustration with Washington State's efforts, though:

On the one hand, I want to give a major shout out to Washington's leaders who are serious about big emissions reductions.

On the other hand, I just want to shout. It's important to get things right, but Washington does not need a road map to devise a framework for task force recommendations to be implemented by a study group with the guidance of a stakeholder action plan that may eventually do something about greenhouse gases.

We need action now. We need our leadership to stake out a clearer commitment to cap and trade in the near future.

And we need to catch up with our neighbors.

That is in reference to the "Washington Climate Change Challenge” announcement the Governor released recently which is notably void of any particular action on the state's part. It does cheerlead for a few initiatives already undertaken:

* Adopting the 2005 Clean Car Act requiring certain automobiles to meet tougher emissions standards beginning with 2009 models;
* Retrofitting 50% of school buses and 20% of local government diesel engine vehicles to reduce highly toxic diesel emissions;
* Leading the nation in requiring fuel suppliers to ensure that 2% of the fuel they sell is biodiesel or ethanol;
* Leading the nation in adopting high performance green building standards and having one of the most energy efficient building codes in the nation;
* Implementing the best energy efficiency standards for appliances;
* Passing a clean energy initiative to increase the amount of energy efficiency and renewable resources in our state’s electricity system;
* Purchasing hybrid and low emission vehicles for state agency use; and
* Adopting the Columbia River Water Management Act, which will work toward meeting the water storage needs for agriculture, communities and salmon.

but it falls far short of the recent claims made in Oregon and British Columbia (and we're not going to even mention California until we're playing ball in the same league as the Governator's state).

We're going to have to face the fact that Gregoire is not an environmental leader, though. She hasn't done anything so far to make us believe that she's going to sit down with environmental groups or energy companies, work out a target for the state --be it on emissions, renewable energy, tax credits, carbon credits or anything else-- and declare it. She just isn't. Big things aren't going to happen at the state level environmentally while she's in office, particularly while she's bickering with one of our state's ostensible environmental front runners over the best way to move 100,000 cars a day through the heart of downtown Seattle and the edge of the Puget Sound. It's going to be up to lawmakers like Inslee, Cantwell, and Mayor Nickels himself to get anything done.