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Leadership Vacuum Fuels Formation of New Group: Northwest Climate Response
As the NW Energy Coalition prepared to celebrate its 20th Anniversary, a new regional coalition working against global warming celebrated its birth. Northwest Climate Response held its first-ever membership meeting in Seattle September 21 to 22.
Already 40 members strong, Climate Response enjoyed strong attendance at its first meeting where members gathered to review progress in creating a new coalition, elect a steering committee, consider a draft strategic plan and draft a policy platform for the fledgling organization. The fourteen steering committee members elected at the meeting will be chaired by Chris Hagerbaumer , who heads the air and transportation programs for the Oregon Environmental Council .
"First, we will conduct a broad educational and outreach campaign within the region," said Hagerbaumer. "We intend to make the case that the region has much to lose from unchecked climate change, and much to gain (economically and environmentally) from solutions to global warming."
The second leg of the strategy, she adds, is "to make our region a leader in taking constructive action to slow, and eventually halt, human-induced climate change. We believe the most effective refutation of President Bush's thesis that solutions to climate change will damage our economy is to demonstrate, in the real world, that the reverse is true."
The perceived lack of leadership to address climate change at a national level in either the U.S. or Canada was a driving force behind formation of Climate Response, which will focus on actions at the local, state, provincial and regional levels.
By demonstrating that solutions to global warming can produce new economic opportunities, Climate Response hopes to make the region an example for other parts of the country and the world to follow. "The political support that we will build for solutions to global warming will feed into our third strategic objective: making our region's voice louder and more effective in national and international debates on policies to combat global warming," said Hagerbaumer.
Hagerbaumer also points to the diversity of membership as one of the organization's strengths. Faith-based groups such as the Washington Association of Churches and the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon's Interfaith Network for Earth Concerns , municipalities, energy-efficiency businesses and good government groups like the League of Women Voters partnered with environmental organizations in forming Climate Response. "We intend to keep building a coalition which is as diverse as the reasons why Northwesterners care about this issue."
Member representatives also had their first chance to meet the newly-hired permanent director of Climate Response, John Young . "I'm tremendously excited about my new position," said Young. "Having worked all of my professional life on progressive issues from sustainable development to First Nations fisheries issues to coalition building with a host of diverse partners, I'm ready to put all of my energy into making Northwest Climate Response into a formidable force for effective, meaningful change."
Young, a native of Ottawa , attended Evergreen State College in Olympia , Washington. He has worked in policy positions in the office of the national leader of Canada's New Democratic Party (NDP ) and in the Office of the Premier of British Columbia under the former NDP government. For the last five years he has been a policy and communications consultant to a variety of clients, mostly in B.C. Young chose Portland as the organizations headquarters and plans to have the office fully operational by the end of the month.
Marc Sullivan