PORT TOWNSEND — The Jefferson County Board of Health might start to consider next month what it would take to declare climate change a public health emergency.
“We are much further along than many people have the faintest idea of,” Board Chair Kees Kolff said Thursday. “There are tipping points that a lot of people thought would happen in the future, but they’re actually happening now.”
Jefferson County Health Officer Tom Locke said King County reviewed comprehensive climate change impacts and how it might affect public health during a conference earlier this month at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle.
“There’s been a public health movement in this, and they’re framing this health issue as the emergency that it is,” Locke said.
“We really don’t have 12 years,” he said. “There’s many that believe it’s too late, that a chain reaction is going to occur that’s irrevocable to change the environment.”
Locke said our challenge is to identify the unique public health impacts, how we can change or, in some cases, how we can adapt.
“Even if people did everything possible all at once, we’re still going to need to adapt,” he said.
Kolff said there has been a commitment on the part of both Jefferson County and the City of Port Townsend to reduce carbon emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
“I don’t know if there is another city or county that has set that standard before or since,” Kolff said.
He referred to the joint city-county Climate Action Committee and suggested the board bring in a speaker for its Jan. 16 meeting. That meeting is currently scheduled for 2:30 p.m. at the public health building, 615 Sheridan St., but Kolff said a larger venue may be possible.
“It’s an idea of us partnering with other entities to really see how we can elevate the consciousness of this issue,” Kolff said.
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Jefferson County Managing Editor Brian McLean can be reached at 360-385-2335, ext. 6, or at [email protected].
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