Governor’s legislative package takes aim at climate change

Proposals could cut greenhouse gases and boost the state’s ‘green’ economy

By Kevin Harden

The Portland Tribune, Oct 27, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (10 Reader comments)

Gov. Ted Kulongoski proposed Monday morning an ambitious plan to battle climate change with a package of legislation to cut greenhouse gases and create incentives to build more energy-efficient buildings and homes.

Portland Tribune file photo

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Saying climate change was “the most important environmental and economic issue of our time,” Gov. Ted Kulongoski unveiled Monday morning an ambitious legislative package to combat global warming and boost the state’s economy through new “green” industries.

Kulongoski told reporters at Oregon Health and Science University’s new Center for Health and Healing in the South Waterfront area that his proposals would help create jobs, cut greenhouse gases and be good for the economy even as the stock market plunged and a global recession loomed.

He didn’t put a price tag on the legislative package, but said the state could enact his plan even as revenue was declining.

“There is nothing that is in this list that is not achievable, even under the current fiscal situation of the state,” Kulongoski said. “We can do this.”

The governor’s plan focuses on four areas: reducing greenhouse gas emissions, creating more energy efficient buildings and houses, investing in renewable energy and developing “sustainable transportation” such as electric cars and adding “congestion tolls” to some highways and roads.

Each of the proposals will be introduced as legislation early next year when the 2009 Legislature convenes in January.

Click here to read the governor's plan to battle climate change.

“We have reached another historic moment in our understanding of the environment, and the economy,” Kulongoski said. “The unregulated and unmitigated emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is changing our climate, threatening our ecology, keeping us dependent on foreign sources of energy and – if nothing is done – is a missed opportunity to reinvent our national and state economies.”

‘Simply a smart investment’

Kulongoski said he chose to meet with reporters in the crowded atrium of the OHSU building because it “exemplifies my vision for the future of Oregon: green, energy efficient, economically smart, ahead of the curve and consistent with our values.”

Mark Edlen of Gerding Edlen Developers, whose company built the building, said the development was one of more than three dozen sustainable and environmentally friendly buildings his company developed using green technology as a vanguard of “the biggest economic development opportunity that we may see in our lifetime.”

“Personally, I don’t really see this as the right thing to do,” Edlen said. “Fifteen years ago when we got started that was our motivation. Today I think it is simply a smart investment.”

Kulongoski built on that message, saying his proposals would help make Oregon a leading state in the green future.

“What the beach bill and the bottle bill were to Oregon in the 1970s, renewable energy and energy efficiency will be to Oregon this decade, and for decades to come,” he said.

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