Karina Andrew reports from the Island County Commissioners board meeting of Tue., Sep. 6, 2022:
Island County commissioners have taken their first major step toward creating and implementing climate change mitigation policy, but not all Whidbey residents are satisfied with the action.
Whidbey climate activists, including members of youth climate coalition United Student Leaders, said the resolution passed by county commissioners Tuesday lacks the strength and urgency necessary to preserve the island amid rising global temperatures.
See the video recording of the board meeting at this link. Public comment regarding the resolution begins at 1:10 and lasts for approximately 52 minutes.
The resolution was initially on the consent agenda, which would have meant the resolution would have been included in a single up-or-down vote on the various consent agenda items with no discussion. Commissioner Jill Johnson moved to move the resolution from the consent agenda to the regular agenda.
Discussion of the resolution then began at the 58:17 and lasted for approximately 26 minutes.
They Said It
Commissioner Janet St. Clair suggested adding verbiage to declare a climate crisis, but Commissioners Melanie Bacon and Jill Johnson did not support the idea.
Johnson said the current draft resolution was as far as she was willing to go, stating that she doesn’t have the luxuries of being an activist or adhering to a single agenda.
“I don’t think there’s broad enough buy-in for some of the activism statements that are in here,” she said.
She also encouraged public commenters to consider what behavioral changes they were willing to make.
“I maybe would ask every youth, are you committed to not having children? To not overpopulating the planet? To not getting on an airplane? To not driving to work? How many changes are you personally going to make?” she said.
Johnson added that changing the language in the resolution would not ultimately affect the county’s planned next step of creating a climate action plan with concrete actions for the county to take.
Bacon said she would only support a resolution in concert with her two fellow commissioners, because addressing climate change is too big a task to be done one-sidedly. She assured public commenters that the county’s resolution is only a first step and will be followed by actionable items in the forthcoming climate action plan.
“I am not a person about rhetoric. I am about action,” she said.
