With the added context of the Gulf oil disaster, Spokane’s initiatives to plan for a clean energy future return to the City Council.
(Editor’s note: The Spokane City Council took up two key resolutions on June 28th that put a bold civic signature to the city’s commitment to a clean energy future. This article was written in advance of the council’s vote to approve the measures.)
The term “no-brainer” has fallen out of favor in public discourse of late because it is shopworn and has lost some of its punch. But, especially given the ongoing and mind-reeling BP oil spew in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s hard to think of a better term to describe why these resolutions are both timely and should be so roundly embraced.
In a sense, they are being broadly embraced. The impressive diversity of the Mayor’s Task Force on Sustainability that brought forward the city’s Sustainability Action Plan last year speaks to this. It addition to a host of educators and government leaders it included both the Lands Council, through Mike Petersen and, conservative business groups like the Spokane Home Builder’s Association. The plan also enjoys the strong support of Mayor Mary Verner, who’s made sustainability a top priority for her administration.
Still, there’s surprisingly strong push-back from the global warming skeptics on the council–Bob Apple and Nancy McLaughlin–and the always quotable Mike Fagan, the Tim Eyman disciple who ran unsuccessfully against Councilwoman Amber Waldref last fall. Fagan heads up a Tea Party splinter group, Spokane Patriots, that, among other things, finds big trouble in River City by the fact that we have a United Nations affinity group, the Spokane Chapter of the United Nations Association, once presided over by former Spokane Mayor Shari Barnard. The Spokane Patriots refer to global warming as “nonsense” and are also out to excise anything related to the United Nations from Spokaloo.
This is the cartoon world that I briefly entered last August in Down the Global Warming Rabbit Hole. As exasperating as it is to comb through the phantom worlds of global warming deniers, it seems all the more surreal now that we have Louisiana and the gulf coast being drenched in a toxic, oily soup.
But I digress. The debate over global warming will go on, and on, even though the science is as settled as the science linking cigarette smoke to lung cancer. But the practical reality is that the world and the world economy are moving, briskly, toward a clean energy future, with much less reliance on fossil fuels. Spokane is as well oriented and well-positioned to take advantage of these promising trends as anywhere else. Although we do hurt ourselves by not acting swiftly. As Jonathan Brunt reported earlier this week,The Washington Public Works Board recently notified Spokane that its application for a $5.7 million low-interest loan for sewer construction will be denied absent a greenhouse gas reduction plan being adopted by the City before the end of the month.
You can do that math on what that means, and while Hoopfest will get all the attention this weekend, the council meeting Monday deeply matters in ways that may not be as much fun to watch, but which are more consequential for the community and the future of our kids.
–Tim Connor