Swarm of Leprechauns, or Environmental Priorities Coalition Lobby Day?

For the last six years, Washington’s Environmental Priorities Coalition, made up of over twenty leading environmental groups, has advocated for the passage of key environmental legislation. Founded in 2003, the coalition has helped pass legislation on everything from clean water and green jobs to tree replanting programs and local solutions to global warming. In 2007 and 2008, the coalition’s eight legislative priorities were all passed with strong bi-partisan support.

Evidence of this statewide support for environmental legislation was obvious last Thursday, February 19th, in the capitol. Senior Producer Ethan Morris, photographer Greg Davis, and I were in Olympia to interview Dick Thompson, Governor Gregoire’s stimulus advisor, about Washington’s share of the federal stimulus plan. As we walked around the Capitol Campus, we ran into several clumps of people wearing identical Kelly green scarves. I started to wonder if St. Patrick’s Day had come a month early.

Fortunately, I soon ran into a former co-worker at the Seattle non-profit Washington Environmental Council—a member of the Environmental Priorities Coalition—who informed us that we had not stumbled upon a coup on Olympia by leprechauns, but rather a statewide group of civilian lobbyists in town for Environmental Priorities Coalition Lobby Day. The one-day annual event brings hundreds of citizen lobbyists and advocates to Olympia to speak out for the passage of the coalition’s annual priorities.

Here is a synopsis of the coalition’s 2009 priorities:

Cap and Invest – Imposes limits on global warming pollution and stimulates the green economy in Washington through investment in clean-tech innovation and the creation of green jobs.

Efficiency First - Promotes energy efficient homes, businesses and public institutions by encouraging the development of low-energy-use buildings and providing incentives to maximize energy efficiency in existing public buildings.

Transit-oriented Communities – Revises the state’s transportation and land-use planning framework to assist local jurisdictions to plan for sustainable growth. Provides incentives for cities and developers to create affordable, livable, transit-oriented development.

Invest in Clean Water - Invests in toxics prevention and critical storm water infrastructure from the Puget Sound to the Spokane River, and ensures that polluters take responsibility for the environmental impacts of their actions.

Importantly, each of these priorities emphasizes the creation of green jobs and a growing green economy in Washington—likewise a priority of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act just signed into law by the Obama administration. That act includes $7.22 billion in national programs administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, including incentives to encourage the creation of green jobs via environmentally sustainable urban and rural re-development.

If Obama is correct in suggesting that green jobs are “the future of our economy”—something he told employees at the Seattle-based contractor McKinstry Company, which retrofits buildings to make them energy-efficient, last year on the campaign trail—then the 2009 Environmental Priorities may be the best way to prepare Washington for the new, and hopefully greener, economy that could emerge from this crisis. If the volume of green-scarf-wearing civilian lobbyists on hand last week in support of these priorities is any evidence, we may already be on the right track.