Home » Environment » Decarbonizing Cascadia » After climate-protection drift and despair, a blueprint for success emerges in Cascadia Washington state’s redoubled climate goals and fresh action plan revive hope to cut emissions. But ongoing fossil fuel development in BC could undercut Cascadia’s progress. A decade ago climate activist Eileen V. Quigley found herself in deep despair. Washington, Oregon and British Columbia had set ambitious plans to control climate-warming greenhouse gases, but misinformation campaigns by fossil fuel lobbies and a global financial meltdown unnerved legislators, blocking measures to drive the states’ climate plans. Shut down in Salem and Olympia, the Seattle-based environmentalist and her allies saw their hopes dashed again in Washington, D.C., in 2010. Despite an ascendant Democratic president and a Democratic majority in Congress, a sweeping climate bill died in the Senate and Republicans opposed to climate action took control of the House. And in BC, after a bruising provincial election in 2009, a pathbreaking tax on atmospheric pollution and other climate protections were barely hanging on. “It was bleak,” Quigley recalled in a recent interview. “There was a lot of anger and definitely frustration and disappointment.” The result: A region billed as “ecotopia” last century came […]
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