Source: What Oregon’s Climate Bill Means for Climate Change
The day before a record-breaking heat dome descended on the Pacific Northwest, Oregon lawmakers finally passed major climate legislation.
House Bill 2021, which passed the House on June 25 and the Senate on June 26, commits Oregon to source 100% of its electricity from clean—or zero-emission—sources by 2040. That’s one of the most ambitious such timelines in the nation—an especially sweet victory since it follows two years of failed attempts to legislate a response to climate change in a state already dealing with its impacts.
“We needed to move forward at addressing climate issues,” Sen. Lee Beyer, D-Springfield, one of the bill’s sponsors, tells Treehugger. “It was time.”
Changing Environment
Oregon’s climate is already changing. The state’s average temperature has risen by nearly 2 degrees (1.1 degrees Celsius) in most of the state over the last 100 years, decreasing snowpack, increasing drought, and leading to more frequent and extreme wildfires. Scientists have already concluded that the heat wave that baked Oregon and the rest of the Pacific Northwest late last month would have been “virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.”
Rep. Pam Marsh, D-Ashland, another of the bill’s co-sponsors, says she has observed the changes first hand in her Southern Oregon district: reservoirs are at 10% or less, morel mushrooms don’t emerge when they used to and weather patterns are no longer reliable.
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