Community advisory group tells Thurston County commissioners region is off track on greenhouse‑gas goals, urges more staff and funding

Members of the Thurston Climate Mitigation Collaborative’s Community Advisory Work Group presented a letter to the Thurston County Board of County Commissioners on Feb. 19, 2025, saying the region is not on track to meet its greenhouse‑gas reduction targets and asking the county to increase staffing and funding for mitigation work.

The advisory group told commissioners its interim greenhouse‑gas inventory shows the region’s emissions are “5% above that baseline level,” and members asked the county to provide more resources for staffing, grant management and cross‑jurisdiction coordination to accelerate implementation of the Thurston Climate Mitigation Plan adopted in 2021.

The letter and presentation stressed why county action matters: the group argued that without added capacity the region will not meet the adopted target of a 45% reduction in countywide greenhouse‑gas emissions by 2030. "We are actually 5% above that baseline level so that's not really good news, right?" Tom Crawford, president of Thurston Climate Action Team and a member of the Community Advisory Work…