Featured speeches given by County Executive, Ron Sims

Global warming press conference
Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2007, 9:30 a.m.
Executive Conference Room

Thank you for coming today.

I would like to thank some special guests who have joined us today and will be available to answers questions.

King County Councilmember Dow Constantine has been working a long time on the issue of global warming and has sponsored legislation at council.

Dennis McLerran of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency is one our leaders on climate change in this region. Under his leadership, his agency has stepped up to the clarion call of climate change.

K.C. Golden, policy director for Climate Solution and the leading voice for climate change in the environmental community. The work of KC and Climate Solutions have demonstrated the enormous benefits of developing our own clean energy economy.

And Dr. Amy Snover, scientific anchor of the soon-to-be-published guidebook on adapting to climate change impacts. Amy is a climate scientist with the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group and leading authority on adapting to climate change impacts.

Thank you three for being here today.

It is my belief that global warming is the defining issue for humankind in the 21st Century. Our health, our economy and our environment are at risk if we do not act to reduce our carbon footprint and take actions to adapt to the changes already underway no matter how much we reduce greenhouse gases.

I also believe that communities that act now on the scientific consensus about global warming will be the communities that thrive in the future. There will be winners and losers in the global economy and there will be winners and losers in global warming. It is my goal to ensure we are winners. We must protect the people, economy and environment of King County and the region by planning for a future that is warmer, with less drinking water in the summer and more frequent flooding in the winter.

We need to move bolding forward and make tough decisions.

Last week’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC) sounded a clear alarm that human beings are changing the face of the planet. We have about 10 years left before we fall off the abyss.

This is our final wake up call. We cannot afford to hit the snooze button any more.

Today I am issuing King County’s Climate Plan, a comprehensive effort that embodies years of work throughout county departments. The plan includes an overview of the science, a greenhouse gas reduction plan a climate preparedness plan, as well as our energy plan.

Some of the work you already know, such as aggressively increasing our use of biodiesel, and purchasing hybrid buses, cars and now trucks.

I want to be clear that we have been “walking the talk” because I am going to be asking a lot of our elected officials, our private sector partners and the citizens of King County. We need to look at every facet of every function.

Not only are we the largest purchaser of biodiesel in Washington State, but our nearly 2-million-gallons-a-year create market conditions that help stimulate in-state production of biodiesel.

But this is not good enough, so we are upping the ante. We will increase our percentage of biodiesel until we reach nearly 5 million gallons a year.

We have led the country in the purchase of hybrid vehicles, with record purchases of hybrid buses and cars. But this is not good enough so we helped form a consortium to begin production of hybrid trucks. And this is not good enough so we are ordering over 400 “plug-in” hybrid vehicles.

We are the largest bus service in the Northwest. But this is not good enough so we passed the Transit Now initiative which will allow a 15 to 20 percent expansion of bus service. And this initiative was a critical step in addressing our transportation emissions.

I would love to read to you about all of the many activities we are doing that are described in our 200-page Climate Plan but I will be merciful. Rather let me say with confidence: we are walking the talk in King County.

So now I need as many elected officials, business leaders, environmental and community leaders, and people of faith to walk with me.

The stakes are high now so we must create together a path to a safer climate.

Included in the mitigation section of the plan is a call for climate stabilization in county operations and by the rest of the region. That means we need to take specific actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below current levels by the year 2050.

We are not the first to make this pledge; we will not be the last. But we are determined to do it.

The first step on this path is to take immediate action. That is why in 2007 I am calling on this government to organize efforts to develop a regional consensus on a target year by which to stop the increase of greenhouse gas emissions. We must first stop making the global warming problem worse.

Given our emissions profile, it is no secret what this region must do to first freeze the increase in greenhouse gas emissions and then to achieve this critical stabilization goal. Most of the answers lie in the transportation sector which accounts for more than half of all global warming pollution in Washington State and King County. Transportation solutions are simple: clean cars and fewer cars.

The Washington State Legislature is the authority in the state that can establish requirements to clean up public and private vehicles, which are our biggest problem.

And the Legislature has responded with the California tailpipe standards in 2005 and the biofuels mandate in 2006. Now the Legislature can take the next step with the Clean Air, Clean Fuels legislation in 2007.

I congratulate the Washington State legislators for being national leaders on the matter of cleaner cars.

We will keep leading the charge on demonstrating clean vehicles technologies and help spur markets, and we hope the Legislature keeps creating the policy framework that promotes clean vehicles.

But even with this outstanding record, growth in driving may overwhelm our efforts.

That is why the second half of the transportation emissions solution is fewer cars.

For King County, I call upon our public and private leaders to now ask ourselves a vital question: How are we going to be accountable for our number one source of global warming and that is transportation?

The Legislature is doing great work on cleaner cars. What are we going to do to promote and ensure fewer cars?

The King County Climate Plan details how King County, both operationally and regionally, has led the country in each of these key strategies and offers clear direction to build upon these strategies.

We offer this plan as guidance in addressing our biggest problems, but ultimately King County cannot reduce emissions in our region without broad support.

There are many key decisions facing this region, and we must know how these decisions will affect our global warming future.

I call upon my public and private colleagues to address this very difficult issue and help me establish a necessary and positive turning point for our future.

The plan is also one of the most comprehensive assessments at what a government needs to do in order to “adapt” or build resiliency against the harms from the climate change impacts that we know are already here.  In fact this report is one of the most comprehensive looks at what one government is doing and will be doing in the world.  We hope to offer this report to other governments as a living model of what we think needs to be done. 

Included in the plan is both a look at how we have created an internal multi-disciplined team in King County government that has worked closely with our partners at the UW Climate Impacts Group to ask another critical question:

How should the changes in the climate we know are coming impact the decisions we make about the future safety of our communities, ecosystems and infrastructure?

This plan goes a long way toward answering that question.

Climate Change is real.  The communities that understand that and take the opportunity to make dramatic changes in the way we live, especially in transportation, will be the communities with a strong economy and a high quality of life.  We can provide the leadership and knowledge to make the tough decisions to protect our livelihoods and our health.  But time is short.  We must be decisive and approach this with a sense of urgency and determination.

Related information

• 2007 King County Climate Plan (PDF, 1201K)
• 2007 King County Energy Plan (PDF, 280K)
• King County Proposes Global Warming Action Plan