Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Catching up on Two 2013 State Reports

These reports have been out for a while, but with the Legislature seemingly fumbling the special session - at least the State government's not just simply "shut down" - it seemed like a good time for the ODOT summary of transportation-related legislation and for a quick hit quote from the Global Warming Commission.

ODOT 2013 Legislative Summary
The Legislative Summary reports on some 42 bills from the House and 35 bills from the Senate that became law. And some other stuff.

Oregon Global Warming Commission 2013 Report
Not good news from the Global Warming Commission report:
Oregon is not on track. “On track” would mean a GHG reduction trajectory that reduced emissions some 20 percent between 2010 and 2020 (only seven years away)....Only in transportation do we see downward‐trending emissions curves that look sustainable, and these are still not dropping sharply enough to track Oregon’s goals....Improving transit, bike, pedestrian and car‐share modes are essential to our region’s economic and equity goals as well as our environmental ones...
If anything, the brand-new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is even grimmer.
Warming in the climate system is unequivocal and since 1950 many changes have been observed throughout the climate system that are unprecedented over decades to millennia. Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850.
(More from IPCC here.)

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