From the Arizona Republic, by Mary Jo Pitzl
While the federal government balks at taking action to curb climate change, states and cities across the country are making moves of their own.
Arizona is hopping on board, although it's a cautious step that will involve at least a year of study before any recommendations are made.
Gov. Janet Napolitano's Climate Change Advisory Group will hold its first meeting this week. It has a year to come up with suggestions on how to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in Arizona, a goal that is likely to be met through greater emphasis on renewable forms of energy, such as solar and wind.
A state forest-health task force already has a subgroup at work on a study of the effects of climate change and variability on Arizona's forests, areas that have a profound effect on water resources in this desert state.
The moves come as leaders of the world's richest nations leave Scotland, where global warming was a key topic during the Group of Eight meeting last week.
President George Bush has refused to have the United States sign the Kyoto Protocol, which outlines goals for greenhouse-gas reductions, although he has acknowledged that climate change is a problem that has some human causes.
In the absence of action at the national level, some states and cities have taken on the climate-change challenge themselves.
Could that lead to Kyoto results by default?
"It seems that way, doesn't it?" said Tom Swetnam, a University of Arizona professor who is leading efforts to produce a white paper on climate change for the forest-health group. "You're seeing individual states take action."
The charge has been led by some coastal states in New England and along the Pacific Coast, where ocean levels - and perhaps political currents - serve as a call to action.
Arizona and neighboring New Mexico have also turned an eye to climate-change issues. That makes them the first inland states to embrace the subject, said Roger Clark, who works on air-quality issues for the Grand Canyon Trust, a Flagstaff-based group that focuses on protecting the natural resources of the Colorado Plateau.
Clark, a member of the governor's advisory group, said he was disappointed that Napolitano didn't set concrete goals for cutting greenhouse gases.
That puts Arizona behind neighbors such as California and New Mexico, whose governors have announced ambitious goals to roll back greenhouse-gas emissions and promote renewable forms of energy, such as solar and wind.
"California is dragging along the rest of the nation," Clark said.
Last month, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger grabbed headlines by pledging to push greenhouse-gas emissions back to year 2000 levels by 2010, and to 1990 levels by 2020.
In New Mexico, Gov. Bill Richardson, a former U.S. Energy secretary, signed legislation that requires the state to get 10 percent of its energy from renewables by 2010.
However, Arizona has some policies in place that should be a logical starting point on which to build further emissions reductions, Clark said.
For example, the Arizona Corporation Commission requires utilities to generate 1 percent of their power from renewable-energy sources, and is contemplating a boost to 15 percent. Earlier this year, the Legislature approved, and Napolitano signed, a bill that sets energy-efficiency standards for 12 appliances not covered by federal standards, such as traffic signals and commercial clothes washers.
And in February, Napolitano signed an executive order requiring that all new state buildings must pull 10 percent of their energy from renewable sources.
The nation's mayors are also launching their own programs, although no one from Arizona has signed on.
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels in February announced the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, which aims to get cities to do what he feels the federal government is not as it backs away from the Kyoto Protocol.
Nickels aimed to get 141 cities to join. The number is significant because the Kyoto accord has been signed by 141 countries. As of Friday, 168 cities had joined.
None of Arizona's cities and towns have joined the effort, according to Nickels' Web site.
Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon was invited to sign the agreement, but he declined, said Marian Yim, counsel to the mayor.
That's because some of the requirements were beyond the city's capabilities, such as making an inventory of local greenhouse-gas emissions, Yim said. Phoenix doesn't gather such data, and with budget cuts crimping ongoing operations, it's not feasible for the city to expand into this area, she said.
Besides, Phoenix already is contributing through such efforts as its alternative-fuels program. It has moved a number of city-owned vehicles, as well as much of the bus fleet, to clean-burning fuels.
Swetnam, who directs UA's Tree Ring Research Lab, said the white paper on climate change in Arizona is important to help understand the effect of warming temperatures on the forests. Warmer weather translates into longer growing seasons and quicker use of soil moisture. It also may aggravate drought, which could affect everything from the vulnerability of the state's forests to the state's water reservoirs.
Swetnam, who also will serve on the climate-change advisory group, said research shows the Earth is warming, and the Southwest is feeling its effects. But it's important to tease out which changes are due to an accumulation of human-generated emissions and which are due to other fac- tors.
"We have quite a bit of knowledge about past climate variability," Swetnam said. And the study effort will be able to tap computer models to try and forecast what might happen given past conditions.
The group hopes to complete its white paper within the next nine months. It may be available in time for the governor's climate-change group to consider as it works toward a June 30 deadline for recommendations on cutting greenhouse gases.
