Pacific coast states, British Columbia agree on climate change cooperation

The three mainland Pacific coast states and the Canadian province of British Columbia have agreed on a framework for cooperative efforts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

The deal, which was signed Monday in San Francisco, is not binding and does not commit California, Oregon, Washington, or British Columbia to spend any public money in attempts to limit emissions of pollutants that warm the atmosphere.

Labeled the Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy, the agreement covers three policy priorities: leading the U.S. and international responses to climate change, transition the signatory states and B.C. to transportation systems that rely on cleaner forms of energy, and invest in renewable energy infrastructure.

"California isn't waiting for the rest of the world before it takes action on climate change,” the Golden State's governor, Edmund G. Brown, said. “Today, California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia are all joining together to reduce greenhouse gases.”

The particular steps the parties agreed to undertake are wide-ranging. For example, the first policy commitment is to "account for the costs of carbon pollution in each jurisdiction." The agreement says that Oregon will continue its effort to impose a price on carbon emissions, while Washington will "set binding limits on carbon emissions and deploy market mechanisms to meet those limits." Thus, the language seems to indicate that Oregon will begin to collect a carbon tax, while Washington will install a cap-and-trade system of greenhouse gas regulation, as California has done.

California and British Columbia agreed to continue their existing programs aimed at forcing polluters to internalize the social costs of carbon pollution.

The agreement also contemplates that the parties will link their carbon emission pricing programs: "Where possible, California, British Columbia, Oregon and Washington will link programs for consistency and predictability and to expand opportunities to grow the region's low-carbon economy."

Brown, Oregon Gov. John A. Kitzhaber, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, and British Columbia premier Christy Clark also agreed to "[h]armonize 2050 targets for greenhouse gas reductions."

Washington already has GHG emission targets for the years 2035 and 2050. The 2008 statute that set them does not include specific programs to be used in the Evergreen State as tools for reaching the targets.

The agreement goes on to include a commitment of each state and province to implement low-carbon fuel standards, expand the use of zero-emission vehicles, and build high-speed rail systems. The parties also committed to a consistent system of appliance energy standards and integrate electricity distribution grids.

The PCACE follows an earlier attempt to coordinate policy responses to climate change among a greater number of western states and Canadian provinces. In 2007 the Western Climate Initiative, which eventually included California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Washington, along with British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec, was formed. That cooperative effort has struggled to achieve consensus among its parties, with some dropping out in following years.

Together, the three U.S. states and the Canadian province that signed the PCACE have a population of 53 million people and an economy with a yearly GDP of $2.8 trillion.

Implementation of at least some of the specific steps called for in the agreement will require enactment of legislation by each of the parties' legislatures.

That will not likely pose much of a problem in California, where Democrats dominate both chambers of the state's General Assembly. However, in the Pacific Northwest there may be political obstacles to full execution of the agreement.

In Oregon, the state senate recently blocked a bill to extend the sunset date on a low-carbon fuel standard authorized in 2009. That program is set to expire in 2015, even though it has not yet been implemented. Two Democrats, including one who represents Portland, joined with the chamber's 14 Republicans to kill the measure that would have extended the sunset date.

In Washington, at least until another election affords the possibility of change, implementation bills could be held up in the state senate, which is controlled by a coalition of a few Democrats and the chamber's Republican members.

Kerry McHugh, a spokesperson for Washington Environmental Council, said that a bipartisan advisory panel required by the 2008 law that set the state's GHG emission targets is examining ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the state. Inslee, along with four legislators, comprise the Climate Legislative and Executive Workgroup.

Steller sea lion population to be removed from threatened species list

For only the second time in the history of the Endangered Species Act, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration has removed a species from the list of threatened and endangered species.

The agency announced Wednesday that the eastern population of Steller sea lions, which roams the Pacific Ocean close to shores from northern California to southeast Alaska, will lose ESA protection.

"We're delighted to see the recovery of the eastern population of Steller sea lions," Jim Balsiger, administrator of NOAA Fisheries' Alaska Region, said. "We'll be working with the states and other partners to monitor this population to ensure its continued health."

According to a March 2008 recovery plan, de-listing of the eastern population would occur if it grew at an average annual rate of three percent for 30 years. That recovery plan asserted a pace of growth equal or greater to that rate since the 1970s.

NOAA said in a statement that, as of 2010, there were more than 70,000 individuals in the eastern population of Steller sea lions.The endangered western population has not only failed to experience anything approaching consistent growth in size, but lost about three-quarters of its size between the late 1970s and the late 1990s.

The estimated census of the combined populations exceeded 250,000 during the 1950s.

De-listing of the population of Eumetopias jubatus nearest to the historic spawning grounds of imperiled Pacific salmonid species will give federal and state agencies more flexibility to kill the animals, which are especially prone to eat salmon migrating up the Columbia River.

The population will remain protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act. However, a federal appeals court ruled Sept. 27 that the MMPA would not be violated if slightly fewer than 100 sea lions per year are killed below Bonneville Dam as a way of protecting migrating anadromous fish.

Steller sea lions were first listed under the ESA in Nov. 1990. The eastern population and its western counterpart, which is found roughly from central and southwestern Alaska west to Russia, was recognized in May 1997.

Graphic courtesy NOAA Fisheries.

De-listing of the eastern population of Steller sea lions takes effect Nov. 22.

NOAA removed a population of gray whales from the list of threatened and endangered species in 1994.

Photo courtesy NOAA Fisheries.

Revised critical habitat designation for northern spotted owl released

 The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service officially threw in the towel today on earlier efforts to scale back habitat protections for the endangered northern spotted owl.

The federal agency primarily responsible for administering the Endangered Species Act designated 9.6 million acres in northern California, Oregon, and Washington as critical habitat under the law.

"We applied the best available science to identify the remaining habitat essential to the spotted owl’s recovery – and to ensure that our recovery partners have the clarity and flexibility they need to make effective land management decisions,” Robyn Thorson, FWS' Pacific Region Director, said in a statement. 

The designation includes 9.29 million acres administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, an agency of the U.S. Department of Interior. 

An addition 291,570 acres of state-owned land is also included.

Environmental organizations applauded the new designation, but expressed concern that it did not include any privately-owned land within its reach.

"In restoring extensive protections on federal lands, today’s decision, protecting millions of acres of habitat for the spotted owl, marks the end of a dark chapter in the Endangered Species Act’s implementation when politics were allowed to blot out science,” Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “It is, however, deeply disappointing that the Obama administration has elected to exclude all private and most state lands, which are absolutely essential to the recovery of the spotted owl and dozens of other wildlife species.”

The George W. Bush administration had attempted to scale back critical habitat protections for the northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina). It sought to eliminate about 1.5 million acres of the species' original 1992 critical habitat designation of about 7 million acres.

A 2008 report by the Interior department's inspector general concluded that the the agency's then-deputy assistant secretary in charge of wildlife management had unlawfully intervened in the process leading to that decision.

In 2010 a federal court rejected the Bush administration's changes to the northern spotted owl's critical habitat designation.

The northern spotted owl is a noctural avian species. It depends on old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest for habitat and is threatened primarily by timber extraction from those lands. 

The new critical habitat designation continues to permit logging in the species' habitat, a situation that drew criticism from a leading owl expert. 

"Independent scientific peer reviews have been crystal clear on owl recovery being tied to protection of old forest habitat especially as competition with the more aggressive barred owl increases and climate change further stresses spotted owl populations,” Dominick DellaSala, a biologist at Geos Institute in Ashland, Ore., and a member of FWS' 2006-2008 northern spotted owl recovery team, said. 

The species was listed as threatened in 1990 after a long and contentious court battle and one of the few successful efforts to invoke the ESA's "God squad" provision allowing a panel of federal officials to override the law's protections.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia.