Oregon Gov. Kate Brown was in Sacramento Tuesday with her counterparts from California and Washington as well as the prime minister of Fiji to affirm their commitment to the Paris global warming agreement after the Trump administration's decision to pull the United States out of the deal.
All three states have joined the Climate Alliance, a coalition of states and localities that are banding to reduce greenhouse emissions and uphold the Paris accords. They also pledged Tuesday to attend the next Conference of Parties meeting in Bonn, Germany, in November as representatives of states looking to uphold the accords.
Fiji, a nation facing major threats from rising sea levels, will be hosting that meeting. The Fijian Prime Minister, Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama, was in Sacramento to sign onto the Under2 Coalition, a group representing some 1.2 billion people that is committed to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius, the level scientists say is necessary to avoid catastrophic impacts.
Bainimarama named Gov. Jerry Brown as a special adviser for U.S. states in advance of the meeting in Bonn.
Kate Brown called global warming "the biggest threat to Oregon's environment, our economy and our way of life," and said the Paris agreement was a blueprint for job creation stability, innovation and U.S. competitiveness. She said Oregon was committed to continuing its legacy of leadership in environmental and global warming issues.
"Despite the decision by the White House to retreat," she said, "we as Oregonians, and as Americans, we will move forward to fulfill the goals of the Paris agreement."
In fact, the Oregon has already fallen well off the pace of climate leadership. It is not even close to meeting the greenhouse gas reduction goals that the Oregon Legislature established in 2007, and has no concrete plan to get there. Unlike California and Washington, it has not passed any hard caps on carbon pollution, and a bill to establish a carbon cap and trade system has languished in the Legislature for the past two sessions. Utilities and Republican legislators oppose the bill, and Democrats have yet to mount a serious push to pass the legislation.
The Legislature did pass a "coal to clean" bill in 2016 to eliminate the use of electricity from coal fired plants by 2035 and mandate 50 percent renewable energy by 2040. But the bill cannot force the closure of any of the out-of-state coal plants serving Oregon customers. Those plants could continue to operate and send power to Oregon via purchases by utilities.
Oregon legislators passed a low-carbon fuel standard in 2009 to reduce emissions from the transportation sector. Suppliers have started reporting the carbon intensity of their fuel sales, but the state won't start any enforcement actions until 2018, and lawmakers are currently debating whether to water down the program.
Brad Reed, a spokesman for the climate action group Renew Oregon, said the next concrete step for Oregon should be to put a limit and a price on carbon dioxide emissions, with serious state reinvestment of the proceeds in measures to fight and adapt to climate change. He said Brown has publicly supported a price on carbon, and that his group delivered petitions with 10,000 signatures to her yesterday supporting House Bill 2135, which would put a cap and price on carbon and reinvest proceeds in renewable energy, efficiency, public transit and electric vehicles.
Renew Oregon and other environmental groups were threatening to put their coal to clean bill on the ballot last year if lawmakers didn't pass a similar bill. Reed says that's still possible.
"The ballot is always an option available to us, especially with a popular idea and a growing wave of urgency in the public to make sure the planet doesn't cook," he said. "We're keeping it open. We have a great bill with Clean Energy Jobs and our leaders in Oregon need to continue acting boldly by passing it."
- Ted Sickinger
503-221-8505; @tedsickinger
Clarification: An earlier version of this story said the state's Low Carbon Fuel Standard had yet to take effect. It has, but the state has delayed taking any enforcement actions until 2018.