Global Warming? Too Hot To Handle

On Wednesday, Aug. 2nd, the Everett City Council missed a chance to shine, and I blame Mark Olson.

Mind you, the opportunity before them was not about achieving world peace or solving world hunger. It was noways near as big as that. In fact it was a pretty innocuous little resolution having to do with global warming. (http://www.everettwa.org/cityhall/insidecityhall/full_agenda/includes/display_file.asp?id=3088)

Introduced by first term Council Member Paul Roberts, it proposed "adopting and implementing the United States Greenbuild Council's 'Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design' (LEED) program." Referenced in the "Whereas" section was the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, and the fact that Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson is one of 240 US Mayors who have signed the agreement. The resolution would have required the City Administration to 1) undertake an inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, 2) establish a baseline for future actions to reduce said emissions, and 3) by May of 2007, make recommendations on a plan to reduce said emissions. Hardly an earthshaking step. In fact, many US cities, and some European nations, are way out ahead of Everett on this one.

But they don’t have Mark Olson.

Council Member Olson objected strongly, and loudly, to this little resolution, almost as if it posed some sort of threat to his very person. He seemed to question whether global warming was a real threat and, if so, whether people had anything to do with it. Besides, Everett is already doing everything a city could possibly do about the problem, if it is a problem. Further, global warming is an issue far beyond the purview of a quaint little provincial City Council. (Okay, I was pretty torqued by his comments and may not have captured his positions exactly as presented. But I’m pretty close.)

Olson was ably seconded by the Council’s resident naysayer, Arlan Hatloe. No surprise there. Ron Gipson also objected to the resolution on what appeared to be grounds of protocol. Go figure. Drew Nielsen expressed his support.

After some surprisingly spirited debate (for this Council,) Olson moved to table the resolution. More debate ensued, until finally Mayor Stephanson had an opportunity to weigh in.

I leaned forward, holding my breath.

You see, at this point I thought the resolution had a pretty good chance. Despite Olson’s impressive bloviation, I figured the motion to table would fail by a 4 to 3 vote and the resolution would pass by the same margin. Shows how much I know.

The Mayor’s comments turned out to be, shall we say, not what I expected. He could have said something like “Come on, you guys! We’ve got a big problem here and there are things we can be doing to make a difference.” Instead, he adopted a conciliatory tone towards the negative leadership. On the up side, he promised to do much of what the resolution called for, though the LEED part went missing. But in the end, it was clearly okay with him for the resolution to be tabled, most likely never to be heard from again.

The vote to table went almost as I expected. Voting to keep the resolution in play were Council Members Roberts, Nielsen and Overstreet. Voting to table were Council Members Olson, Hatloe, Gipson and . . . well, here is where I guessed wrong.

I consider Council President Brenda Stonecipher to be very intelligent and, overall, pretty fair-minded, though leaning sometimes to the conservative side of things. I assumed she would recognize the magnitude of the problem this resolution was attempting to address, as well as the fact that, little as it was attempting to do, it was a start. Boy is my face red.

I don’t know if Mayor Stephanson’s comments affected President Stonecipher’s vote one way or another. . . or anyone else’s for that matter. But I’m pretty sure they didn’t inspire anyone to stand tall and stride confidently into an uncertain future.

So the naysayers triumphed and the Everett City Council’s conservative reputation was preserved untarnished. Though they seldom ever see a development proposal, large or small, that they aren’t willing to lovingly embrace, they boldly avoided taking even a small step in the direction of maybe - I don’t know - helping to save the human race.

Sigh!

One thing I am glad about, though, is the fact that the debate took place at all, and in an open meeting too, so we could see where everyone stood. For that we have to thank Paul Roberts, maybe the most progressive Council Member Everett has seen in a while.

Thank you, Council Member Roberts.