N.C. Legislature Makes Picks for Global Warming Commission

Environmentalists are praising the legislature's appointments to the North Carolina Commission on Global Climate Change, the group charged under law with setting a greenhouse gas pollution reduction goal for the state.

"Legislators should be commended for designing a bipartisan and diverse commission that can lead North Carolina toward a prominent role in curbing global warming," says Michael Shore, an air policy analyst with the state office of Environmental Defense.

Under the law that created the commission, each chamber made nine appointments. The House appointed six of its own along with three public members. The House members are Joe Hackney (D-Orange), Becky Carney (D-Mecklenburg), Pricey Harrison (D-Guilford), Wilma Sherrill (R-Buncombe), Alice Graham Underhill (D-Craven) and W.A. Wilkins (D-Person). The public appointments are industrial safety engineer Thomas Cecich, president of TFC & Associates in Apex; Robert Glaser, president of the N.C. Automobile Dealers Association; and Susan Tompkins, chair of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Storm Water Advisory Committee.

The Senate appointed three of its members: Charlie Albertson (D-Duplin), Janet Cowell (D-Wake) and Robert Pittenger (R-Mecklenburg). It also appointed six public members: attorney John Garrou of Winston-Salem, a former managing partner of Womble Carlyle and husband of state Sen. Linda Garrou (D-Forsyth); Ivan Urlaub, policy director of the N.C. Sustainable Energy Association; Dr. Dee Eggers, professor of environmental studies at UNC-Asheville; Walter Clark, a coastal community and policy specialist with N.C. Sea Grant; Dr. Edward Erickson, an economics professor at N.C. State University; and Tim Toben, CEO of Carolina Green Energy in Chapel Hill.

Hackney and Garrou will co-chair the commission.

Under the law, the group’s other members include representatives of Duke Power, Progress Energy, N.C. Citizens for Business & Industry, the Manufacturers & Chemical Industry Council of North Carolina, N.C. Farm Bureau Federation, N.C. Forestry Association, Environmental Defense, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, N.C. Coastal Federation, Conservation Council of North Carolina, Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, N.C. State’s College of Agriculture & Life Sciences, N.C. Agricultural & Technical State University’s School of Agriculture & Environmental Sciences and the Carolina Environmental Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The law also named two appointees by name: Dr. Stanley Riggs, a geologist specializing in sea level change at East Carolina University and N.C. State Climatologist Dr. Sethu Raman.

The commission is scheduled to complete its work and report back to the legislature by November 2006.