By Joe Cortright

Cortright is president and principal economist at Impresa, a consulting firm specializing in regional economic analysis, innovation and industry clusters, and the director of the think tank City Observatory. He lives in Portland.

Portland's leaders staked a bold claim to climate leadership in 1993, when the city became one of the first in the nation to adopt a goal of reducing carbon emissions. We pledged to reduce emissions 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.

Since then, the city has been hailed as a climate leader: we are a member of the C40 group of cities, and one of 30 cities credited as having reduced its carbon emissions since 1990. Along with other U.S. mayors, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler recently traveled to Copenhagen to cheer on city-led climate talks.

Trouble is, these accolades have all the heft of a third grade “participation” trophy, rewarding the city for showing up, not actual performance. When it comes to the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions—transportation—Portland is not making progress toward reducing emissions, either by reference to its recent history or in comparison to the goals set in its own Climate Action Plan.

To its credit, the city does a good job of tracking greenhouse gas pollution. The latest inventory ­­– tallied across Multnomah County but mostly representing Portland ­– shows that there have been reductions in commercial, industrial and residential generation of greenhouse gases. While we did cut emissions in the 1990s and through 2010, the city has made little or no overall progress in the past five years. And as has occurred elsewhere, there’s been a considerable surge in greenhouse gases associated with transportation. After gas prices plunged in 2014, carbon emissions from transportation in Portland shot up due to more driving.

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Another, independent source of data, the DARTE national inventory of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions demonstrates this surge, showing that Portland’s greenhouse gases from transportation—chiefly from automobiles and trucks—have risen 14 percent. In just five short years, greenhouse gas emissions have increased by more than 1,000 pounds per person in Portland. Rather than measurably improving, Portland’s contribution to transportation greenhouse gases is getting measurably worse.

Unfortunately, we can't mitigate the climate crisis if we make only fitful and frequently reversed progress in reducing carbon. To succeed, reductions will have to be large and steady.

As the city's 2015 Climate Action Plan acknowledged, it’s almost impossible to achieve the city's climate goals without a substantial reduction in emissions from driving. Even with more widespread adoption of electric vehicles, the 2015 plan noted, Portland would have to substantially reduce the amount of vehicle miles traveled per person. The plan calls for reducing vehicle miles traveled per person in the Portland from 17 miles per day in 2013 to 12 miles per day in 2030 and 6 miles per day in 2050.

Questioned about this discrepancy, staff of the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability maintain that the material in the plan is an illustration of just one possible scenario for meeting the city's climate goals. This of course begs the question of where the city will find carbon savings in other areas (residential, commercial and industrial) if we can’t meet the vehicle-miles-traveled goals. It also suggests that despite the word "must" in the city's adopted climate plan, the policies actually have no real teeth. What this really means is that the plan is just window-dressing, designed to create the illusion that there might be some way for the city to make progress in carbon emissions. But it plainly isn't a detailed, enforceable action plan for making progress. And given five years of moving in the wrong direction, it is strong evidence that this plan is failing, except perhaps as a public-relations exercise.

Instead of facing the utter failure to meet our stated climate goals, city and state leaders are endorsing spending billions of dollars on freeway expansions which are guaranteed to increase carbon emissions and car dependence. Our leaders are pretending to be climate champions, but their actions make them effectively the worst sort of climate change denialists, giving the impression that something is being done, while enabling the same failed policies and spending decisions that created the climate crisis to march on unquestioned.