April 2 workshop brings local leaders together to address climate change as a region
Metro has a long history of working to limit its carbon footprint through its sustainability programs such as recycling education, making and selling MetroPaint and composting animal manure at the Oregon Zoo. Now Metro is taking a leadership role in climate change, hosting a local workshop to find ways to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions on a regional level.
A new study by Metro found Portland area residents create 31 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2006. That's nearly 68 billion pounds of pollution. But the main contributor is not coal fired plants and automobile emissions. It's the consumption of materials such as goods and food, much of which is produced outside the area.
In putting together the Regional Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory, Metro planners used information from a recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report to get a comprehensive view of emissions. The inventory shows 48 percent of the total Portland-area pollution comes from extracting, manufacturing, shipping, recycling and disposing of products and food which are produced and grown both inside and outside the region. Residential and business energy consumption creates another 27 percent, with the final 25 percent coming from local transportation.
"We need to highlight what consumers can do," said David Bragdon, Metro council president. "This is an opportunity to show people that by making informed choices and changes in the items we buy and the way we get around, we can be part of the solution to climate change."
Metro has been mandated by the Oregon legislature to develop long-range plans for meeting state climate pollution reduction goals for transportation and land use. The agency has invited local jurisdictions to begin addressing how to meet those goals at an April 2 workshop headed by Dr. William Moomaw, professor and founding director of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at Tufts University. Moomaw is a lead member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations sponsored group of scientists.
At the workshop, members of the Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation and the Metro Policy Advisory Committee will work to develop a common understanding of the science of climate change and the impacts of land use and transportation strategies. The groups will begin developing tools to forecast climate pollution as well as identify shared goals, expectations and policy options for achieving a healthy climate and region.