Obama administration takes on climate change in national forests
In the absence of comprehensive legislation on climate change, the Obama administration is moving forward with plans to combat the effects of global warming in the nation's increasingly fire-prone national forests.
Beginning this year, all 155 national forests -- including San Bernardino and Cleveland national forests in the Inland area -- must begin to incorporate climate change and its effects into long-term management plans.
"We figure we're going to be at this for several decades," said David Cleaves, climate change adviser to U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. "Climate change should be imbedded in most of what we do."
The agency has launched a 10-point "scorecard" system by which each forest can be evaluated on a range of criteria related to climate change.
Annually, they will be asked to identify which of the 10 goals they have accomplished, Cleaves said.
The early stages of the plan involve providing training on climate change causes and effects , as well as selecting a coordinator to oversee the efforts. The later stages are far more complex. Forests will ultimately be tasked to monitor the effects of climate change on watersheds and species, track carbon levels within the forests and create plans to reduce the emissions within forest boundaries.
The agency is hoping forests will be able to say they have accomplished at least seven of the 10 goals by 2015, Cleaves said.
San Bernardino National Forest spokeswoman Valerie Baca said some of the goals align with programs already in place, including initiatives to lower energy and water use, reduce the size of the forest's fleet of vehicles and boost recycling efforts.
The agency's climate plan, highlighted by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack during this month's international climate change talks in Mexico, comes amid debate in Congress over whether man-caused global warming is real. The Obama administration and congressional Democrats failed this year to pass sweeping legislation to curb global warming.
Cleaves, who formerly worked out of the Forest Service's fire laboratory in Riverside, said he prefers to leave the debate over the causes of climate change to politicians, and focus on facts.
Source: www.pe.com