Analyst Slams Owens, Colorado Efforts At Climate Conference - RMN

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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 Denver public policy analyst 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 not seen strong leadership from the governor in Colorado," she said during the final day of "Climate Change and Future of the American West," a three-day conference sponsored by the CU Natural Resources Law Center. "We don't have a climate advisory group in this state, unlike other states," she said. "We have done very, very little in this state." An Owens spokesman disagreed and said the governor has taken significant steps to curb warming.

At Friday morning's Boulder conference, environmental officials from Arizona and New Mexico summarized their states' efforts to inventory sources of greenhouse gas emissions and to set reduction targets. No comparable presentation was offered by Colorado officials.

"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 Owens' spokesman, Dan Hopkins. However, the governor believes global warming "is an issue that needs to be addressed," Hopkins said. "But is it the No. 1 issue on the plate of state government right now? No, it's not."

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