Preparing For A Changing Climate

The debate over global warming and climate change continues to rage on. In the meantime, Washington’s Governor Gregoire chose to be proactive by directing state agencies to develop an integrated climate change response strategy to enable state, tribal and local governments, and public and private organizations to prepare for and adapt to the impacts of changing climate conditions. Tuesday the Department of Ecology released “Preparing for a Changing Climate: Washington State’s Integrated Climate Change Response Strategy,”. The report lays out a framework that decision makers can use to help protect Washington’s natural resources, communities, and economy from the impacts of climate change. DOE’s Dan Partridge tells what the next steps are.

PARTRIDGE: The Governor and the legislature are evaluating these recommendations and these strategies. Some of these things are basically already in process, such as encouraging water conservation strategies across the state and can be implemented at very little cost. Other things are going to require some kind of investment from the state or the legislature and of course in the current budget crisis we’re not going to see any kind of funding immediately.

In other words, while implementation of the response strategies identified in the report is not something which will happen today, or possibly even the very near future, this report is at least a step in the right direction for protecting the economy and the people of Washington from climate change.

I’m Lacy Gray and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Northwest Ag Information Network.