“I listen to scientists first, and then politicians.” - Ron Sims

By Elizabeth Willmott
New Energy Cities Project Manager

Note: Ron Sims speaks at Climate Solutions 4th Annual Breakfast on Friday, June 8.

In 1988, then-King County Councilmembers Ron Sims and Bruce Laing proposed to create an office that would study the effects of global warming.  It failed, and Sims and Laing were ridiculed by the Seattle Times for their "hyperbolic clouds of rhetorical gas.”  Eighteen years later, the Seattle Times featured a piece with an acknowledgment of the two officials’ foresight, honoring the work that King County had subsequently done to combat climate change.

In his time as a public official – as King County Executive and then as Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)– Sims has spoken the truth on climate change and taken bold action to mitigate its harmful progression.  He worked tirelessly with the County’s Department of Natural Resources and Parks as early as the 1990s, crafting programs to protect the future legacy of the Northwest environment.  In 2005, after hosting “The Future Ain’t What It Used to Be” conference on climate impacts in the Northwest, Sims expanded the work to other county agencies through the Executive Action Group on Climate Change.  

Under Sims’ leadership, King County broke national ground:

• Joining the Chicago Climate Exchange to make a legal and financial commitment to reduce its direct (operational) greenhouse gas emissions 
• Setting a community-wide goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 2007 levels by 2050, consistent with internationally agreed-upon science of the global reductions needed to stabilize the climate, and then embedding that goal in the County’s Comprehensive Plan 
• Adding greenhouse gas pollution to the County’s environmental review of projects under the State Environmental Policy Act 
• Co-authoring a guidebook with the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington for other local governments around the world on how to prepare for climate change impacts.

That’s just the short list. (The longer list is here.) 

During his tenure in Washington, D.C., he was instrumental in creating the Partnership for Sustainable Communities between HUD, the US Department of Transportation, and the US Environmental Protection Agency, an unprecedented agreement to ensure that affordable housing funded by the federal government is built in close proximity to jobs and transportation.  The program is an ongoing collaboration among the three federal agencies to encourage shorter travel times, lower travel costs, and reduced greenhouse gas pollution from motor vehicles.  It also means more livable, climate-friendly communities.

At HUD, Sims was also an active member of the nation’s first-ever federal task force on climate change adaptation.

From the beginning, Sims’ deep commitment to climate action has been grounded in science and powered by a sense of justice - with the conviction that fossil fuels we burn in the Puget Sound should not harm our community’s livelihood in the decades to come, nor the day-to-day existence of others around the world.  

Two of his favorite sayings summarize his work especially well:

“I listen to scientists first, and then politicians.”

And simply:  “Peace and prosperity to you.”

These expressions – fundamentally about science and justice – are the heart and soul of his legacy and ongoing work to combat climate change.