NOACA won't let the 'political football' of climate change get in the way of seeking grants - cleveland.com
NOACA won’t let the ‘political football’ of climate change get in the way of seeking grants - cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio - The politics of climate change has been playing out over the past few months at the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency.
But one thing is certain, the regional board that funnels money to local transportation and environmental projects, doesn’t want to jeopardize its ability to obtain state and federal grants to improve air and water quality.
That point was made clear Friday as two NOACA board committees recommended that an Overall Work Plan & Budget – that includes a section called “Climate Action Planning” – go to the full board for approval in June.
“I would personally prefer an anti-pollution stance but I’m not going to vote against potentially millions of dollars coming into our community to make sure that Lake Erie is clean and that we breathe cleaner air,” said Lake County Commissioner John Plecnik, a member of NOACA’s finance and audit committee who doesn’t believe science is clear on pollution’s effect on climate.
“So, I’ll vote for this no matter what we name it,” Plecnik said, “but I want to say for the record I believe in God, not Captain Planet.”
The reason for Friday’s meeting can be traced back to February when NOACA’s finance and audit committee and its executive committee approved a draft of the organization’s work plan that included a section called “Regional Climate Action Plan/Program,” only to have staff change the wording before the work plan went to the full governing board in March.
The revised version instead referred to the section on climate as “Local Emissions and Weather Resiliency Planning” and removed a number of references to “climate” from the text.
That didn’t sit well with the governing board, which received the plan on March 10 and voted 27-10 to revert to the prior draft and its climate verbiage. The fact that the language had been changed had some suspecting climate change deniers on the board were exuding influence behind the scenes.
But the issue was still not settled. NOACA Executive Director Grace Gallucci and Executive Committee Chairman John Hamercheck, a Lake County commissioner, called a special meeting Friday to resolve lingering concerns.
Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne and Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb objected to the special meeting, after which Gallucci and Hamercheck responded with an email to the two elected officials assuring them “that there has never been any intention to stop or scale back NOACA’s work on climate planning,” and that the changes to the work plan “and presented at the March meeting were part of the larger, routine process of crafting documents subject to public comment and regulatory approval.”
The version of the work plan approved Friday includes a section called “Climate Action Planning” and describes a program that “advances NOACA’s efforts towards the development, implementation and maintenance of a framework and plan for climate action (climate pollution reduction) to reduce emissions pollution that cause climate impacts and harm human health; mitigate the effects of extreme weather; adapt to changes that may occur, particularly relative to infrastructure; and build resilience.”
Ronayne, who said he wants climate action to be an important part of his agenda as county executive, said Friday that he still wants a better explanation as to why the climate language was removed between the committee meetings in February and the governing board meeting in March.
To express his displeasure, Ronayne on Friday voted for the revised plan as a member of the finance and audit committee but then abstained as a member of the executive committee, knowing that the motion to approve the plan would still have enough votes to pass.
Asked after the meeting how he would ultimately vote on the plan went it goes back to the governing board, Ronayne did not specifically say.
“We are all about trying to bring revenues to fix problems like our climate resiliency; so I’m going to listen,” he said. “I don’t want to presuppose my own vote, but I do believe that we need to clean up the process at NOACA so that the governing board has a clear roadmap and a real framework of its own role.”
Plecnik, who didn’t attend the March 10 meeting but said after Friday ‘s meeting that he would “have voted for whatever plan made us eligible for the air and water grants” believes the issue before NOACA became a “political football.”
“My opinion is that people took grant planning and turned it into a fight over climate change,” he said.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate economics
Climate change is now a driver of the world’s economy. The impact is profound:
- Catastrophic weather events — hurricanes, floods, droughts, high temperatures — are more frequent and more extreme. The cost can be measured in both the initial damage caused and the longer-term impact on the economy.
- Vulnerable communities are increasing climate-related investments, hardening infrastructure and taking other protective measures.
- Investment in carbon capture and storage technologies is increasingly rapidly.
- Governments are making investments and crafting regulations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
On top of all of this is the cost of uncertainty. As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, says, “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid.”