Climate expert blasts Owens

Jim Erickson, Rocky Mountain News

Published June 9, 2006 at midnight

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BOULDER — Colorado has done "very, very little" to address the global warming issue, largely due to lack of leadership from Gov. Bill Owens, a University of Colorado public policy expert told about 160 colleagues at a climate meeting Friday.

"Have we ever been in the vanguard on this issue? Not," said Heidi VanGenderen, a senior associate with the Wirth Chair in Environmental and Community Development Policy at the University of Colorado-Denver.

"We have addressed this issue not at all," she said during the final day of "Climate Change and West," a three-day conference sponsored by the CU Natural Resources Law Center.

"We have not seen strong leadership from the governor in Colorado," she said. "We don’t have a climate advisory group in this state, unlike other states. ... We have done very, very little in this state."

But Owens spokesman Dan Hopkins later disputed that. "In some ways, the jury is still out on the overall impact of climate change and what individual states can do that would be beneficial, as opposed to taking a regional or national approach," said Hopkins.

Furthermore, Owens believes global warming "is an issue that needs to be addressed," he said.

At Friday morning’s session, environmental officials from Arizona and New Mexico summarized their states’ efforts to inventory the sources of greenhouse gas emissions and to set reduction targets.

No comparable presentation was offered by Colorado officials.

But in fact, the state of Colorado has already tackled climate change in several ways, Hopkins said:

* In 1998, the state health department conducted an inventory of the sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Colorado. It was updated in 2000 and is due to be revised again this year.

* In July 2005, Owens issued an executive order directing state agencies to initiate an energy management program to improve energy efficiency in the state government.

* The Governor’s Office of Energy Management and Conservation has supported numerous efforts to conserve energy, increase the use of renewable energy sources, and decrease the use of fossil fuels.

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