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Climate Change
"The struggle to save the global environment is in one way much
more difficult than the struggle to vanquish Hitler, for this time the war is with ourselves.
We are the enemy, just as we have only ourselves as allies."
~ Al Gore
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Landmark Global Warming Bill Becomes Law in Washington
S.B. 6001 establishes standards to reduce global warming pollution
Monday, May 7, 2007
By: Joelle Robinson
National Wildlilfe Federation
http://online.nwf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=WesternNRC_Homepage
- article no longer available online
Thanks in part to National Wildlife Federation constituents like you who weighed in
with their legislators, Gov. Gregoire signed Washington's climate change bill setting the stage for dramatically
reducing the state's global-warming pollution over the next four decades.
Senate Bill 6001 puts into law Governor Gregoire's initial timeline for reducing global warming pollution
from sectors including transportation, industry and power production. Washingtonians representing a wide
variety of interests have been drafted by the Governor to design a plan for achieving those goals, with
legislative action to accomplish the goals expected beginning in 2008.
S.B. 6001 limits the carbon emissions from investments by utilities to meet the energy needs of Washington.
Beginning July 1, 2008, state utilities will be barred from building facilities or signing long-term contracts
to buy power from facilities that pump out more climate pollution than a basic, modern natural gas-fueled plant.
An advisory team will sort through recommendations from numerous workgroups involved in the Governors climate
change process. The National Wildlife Federation is on subcommittees working to reduce pollution and promote
climate solutions from the transportation, industrial, energy production, agricultural, forestry and other
sectors. The advisory teams' official charge is to find ways to meet the targets set out in the Governors
February 2007 executive order and now codified in law through SB 6001:
* Reducing climate pollution -- to 1990 levels by 2020, additional reduction to 25% below 1990 levels
by 2035, and then to half of 1990 levels by 2050.
* Tripling the number of clean-energy jobs in the state to 25,000 by 2020.
Current science concludes that with an 80% reduction from current levels of global warming pollution by 2050 -
basically, 2 percent a year - we can avert the worst effects of global warming. This bill puts Washington on
the path to doing this.
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