Mar 6 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Kathie Durbin The Columbian, Vancouver, Wash.

The Washington Senate passed a climate change bill Wednesday that supporters called "historic."

"This bill puts Washington at the forefront of addressing global warming and will ensure Washington state plays a prominent role in shaping the national climate debate," said Bill LaBorde, program director for Environment Washington.

"I'm very pleased that the state Legislature has taken action to address the largest threat to our environment and economy," Gov. Chris Gregoire said after the vote. The legislation, which she requested, now goes to her desk for her signature.

Washington joins California and New Jersey in placing limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

House Bill 2815, a top priority of environmentalists, also starts the process of enacting a regional cap-and-grade system that is intended to reduce the state's carbon emissions by at least 70 percent over the next 40 years.

The Senate bill passed on a largely partisan 29-19 vote after an identical bill passed the House 64-31 on Feb. 19.

Republicans representing rural areas of the state introduced a string of amendments intended to weaken the measure.

But even some Democrats said the state might be entering uncharted territory by setting goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions without understanding how achieving those goals would affect the lives of Washington residents.

The bill has several parts.

It would require the state's largest industries and energy utilities to measure and report greenhouse gas emissions, to join a national registry of polluters, and eventually to live with new statewide emission caps.

It would direct the Department of Ecology to design a cap-and-trade system for limiting carbon emissions that would be presented to the 2009 Legislature, and that could become a model for a regional system covering several Western states and Canadian provinces.

It would require the Department of Transportation to adopt statewide goals for reducing per capita vehicle miles traveled by the year 2050.

And it would direct the Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development to survey the employment potential in clean-energy businesses. The state has already set a goal of creating 25,000 "green-collar" jobs by the year 2020.

Neither the House nor the Senate budget includes the $250,000 the governor requested to pay for that study, however. Without that funding, said Becky Kelley of the Washington Environmental Council, the green-collar jobs part of the bill is meaningless.

The bill mandates that the state reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, to 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2035, and to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Sen. Jim Kastama, a Democrat from Puyallup, introduced several amendments that would have slowed the process by requiring state agencies to come back to the Legislature with specific plans showing how the state will meet those targets.

"Nobody knows what that mandate means in this state," Kastama said. "No one knows the consequences." Once the Legislature has a better grasp of the consequences, he said, it can decide whether to move forward.

"I can't see that we can bring ourselves back to those 1990 levels. There's no way," said Sen. Tim Sheldon, a Democrat from Potlatch. He noted that the population of the Puget Sound region is expected to grow by 1.5 million, or 40 percent, in coming decades.

"We really have to be realistic in our goals . . . and not just pick a goal we can't reach," he said.

Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver, who led the Senate campaign for the bill and also prime-sponsored last year's climate change bill, disagreed.

"These are good goals," he said. "We passed them last year. They were attainable then, they are attainable now."

He noted that the precise language of the bill "was very carefully negotiated" and was agreed to by all stakeholders, including the industries that would be regulated under the measure.

Pridemore said the bill before the Senate "simply lets us begin collecting the data" on greenhouse gas emissions and establishes a framework for Washington to use in its negotiations with other members of the Western Climate Initiative.

Kastama was unconvinced. "To make good public policy, you have to know the consequences," he said. "It's important we know what we can manage and what we can't manage and lay that all out before us."

Kastama's amendments failed.

Republicans took aim at language in the bill that calls for reducing driving statewide. They said any effort to limit driving would unfairly discriminate against residents of rural areas who have to travel long distances for school, jobs and health care.

"You're not going to get chemotherapy in Ferry County," said Sen. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville."Many of the services we need are 50 miles away."

Sen. Jim Honeyford, a Republican from Sunnyside, near Yakima, said there's no way people in his part of the state can reduce their driving because they have to travel farther and have no access to mass transit. "The only way you're going to do that is to take away the keys," he said.

"There's nothing in this bill that regulates the number of miles people can drive," countered Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam. Instead, he said, the bill asks the transportation department to suggest statewide strategies to reduce driving, such as encouraging telecommuting and flexible work schedules.

Sen. Dan Swecker, R-Rochester, said he would have been able to support the bill if it had focused on ways to get more fuel-efficient cars on the road. "This issue of vehicle miles traveled is the wrong indicator," he said. "We would have been better off to pick fuel efficiency."

Kathie Durbin covers the Legislature for The Columbian. Contact her at 360-586-2437 or kathie.durbin@columbian.com