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IBEW Leader Co-chairs California Climate Change Panel

December 16, 2009

Pat Lavin, Seventh District IEC member and Business Manager of Diamond Bar, Calif., Local 47, has been selected to co-chair a state advisory panel on climate change, sponsored by the Pacific Council on International Policy, an elite think tank.

Introduced at a news conference on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, the Pacific Council Task Force on California’s Adaptation to Climate Change, an independent, non-partisan group of private citizens, is charged with helping come up with solutions to a climate crisis that could put that island and 1,100 miles of the states’ coastline under water. Says Lavin:

Labor is often not present when research and policies are made regarding climate change. Bringing a long background from IBEW’s utility and outside line construction branch, I am there to see that the needs of workers and our communities are put up front, not marginalized.

With some Americans questioning the accuracy of predictions of global warming, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger joined Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Treasure Island to introduce CalAdapt, an interactive project that models how climate trends could play out over the next century. CalAdapt is available to Internet users by downloading Google Earth.

The task force, a recommendation of the state’s natural resources agency, will focus upon three critical hazards that arise from global warming: increased wildfires and extended fire seasons, rising sea levels, and reduced availability of water leading to drought.

Appointed on the recommendation of John Bryson, retired CEO of Edison International, who co-chairs the Pacific Council on International Affairs with former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Lavin joins environmentalists and leading experts on the panel which is due to make recommendations by next spring.

“We need to better understand labor’s stake in what methods our nation and our state will employ to mitigate the effect of rising sea levels,” says Lavin, who also joins Los Angeles, Local 18 Business Manager Brian D’Arcy, L.A. Local 11 Business Manager Marvin Kropke, and Vacaville, Local 1245 Business Manager Tom Dalzell on the board of the California Foundation on the Economy and the Environment.

Lavin, Dalzell, D’Arcy and Ron Jones, business manager of Medford, Ore., Local 659, also sit on the board of the Coalition of California Utility Employees (CCUE). Says Lavin:

We are keeping the outside and utility branches in California in the mix, a force to be reckoned with.