Letter: County commissioners should declare climate emergency
Published 1:30 am Saturday, March 14, 2026
Editor,
As a student who has been pushing for a climate emergency declaration in Island County for the past three years of my life, Melanie Bacon’s sound off on climate action in Whidbey News-Times and The Record last week, demonstrates a willing ignorance towards what groups like United Student Leaders have been advocating for.
USL has always advocated for a climate emergency declaration, not a state of emergency. A climate emergency declaration puts our cities, counties and states to a higher degree of accountability to respond to the climate emergency. A climate emergency declaration also puts the necessary pressure on higher governmental bodies such as our state and federal government to pursue climate action (thousands of local governments including several in Washington have done so). We have spoken about this differentiation directly with Commissioner Bacon in the past. Declaring a climate emergency would be as simple as amending C-55-22 (the current climate resolution) by changing the word “threat” to “emergency.”
Commissioner Bacon wrote in the Sound Off: “I am a county commissioner. If you want me to actually fix climate change, elect me president.” This statement completely ignores the way change is actually made. Change does not merely appear at the federal level because people want it. It happens when citizens, local governments, and institutions all begin to use their levers to put pressure on the federal government.
Alongside this, the idea that climate action only takes place at the federal level is ungrounded in reality. Historically, state and local governments have been at the forefront of climate justice struggles, from California attending the COP30 to the mayor’s climate compact to the Build Public Renewables Act in NYC. In fact, while oftentimes work at the federal level gets blown away with each new president, state and local governments are some of the only governments that build long term climate justice that stands the test of time.
Students have been putting pressure on the federal government for change, and we have requested our local governments to do the same, a request the Island County commissioners have denied for around three years now. Commissioner Bacon, if the county commissioners believe that the current situation is a climate emergency, as you stated, then stop the semantics and declare one.
Carter McKnight,
United Student Leaders member
