Oregon schoolchildren once regularly saw a documentary about the growing climate crisis in their state.
“Clean water and clear air are imperatives of life itself,” narrator Richard Ross began the documentary. Yet, he warned, Oregon stands in danger.
“The days of paradise may be numbered,” Ross said. “The air of Oregon can be as sweet and fresh as its waters, but the very jobs they draw soil the air above and the waters below in numbers and ways faster than present planning and prevention can manage.”
The documentary, “Pollution in Paradise,” first aired on KGW television Nov. 21, 1962. It was written and produced by journalist Tom McCall, roughly five years before he became the governor of Oregon.
McCall’s Republican administration from 1967 to 1975 oversaw numerous efforts to protect the environment — from the beach and bottle bills to the restoration of the Willamette River and the creation of the Land Conservation and Development Commission.
In the process, Oregon gained a reputation as an environmentalist state.
Oregonians may continue to fight for the environment, but the days of McCall Republicans are over, and Meredith Connolly worries the political climate in Oregon may threaten the natural climate.
Connolly, the Oregon director of the nonprofit Climate Solutions, fears the McCall legacy could be abandoned — and Oregon could become a case of paradise lost.
She told Street Roots she sees little hope for bipartisanship, recalling the hundreds of unmasked people crowding the steps of the Oregon Capitol on July 18 to protest wearing masks, social distancing and other pandemic measures.
How can the climate crisis be addressed in a country where many people insist — sometimes violently — that science is a personal choice?
“Watching the politicalization of science and simple things like wearing face masks was eerily familiar to those of us working on climate,” Connolly said. “There have been a lot of echoes of our work.”
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Oregon legislators ended both their 2019 regular session and 2020 short session in gridlock over proposed cap-and-trade legislation to limit carbon emissions. Republicans refused to give any ground on the issue.
Connolly said GOP mulishness reflects the deep political schisms that afflict both Oregon and the rest of the country. However, she added, there is a silver lining.
When the Legislature failed to act, Gov. Kate Brown signed an executive order March 10, setting greenhouse gas emissions goals and directing state agencies to take steps to meet those goals.
“That executive order gives us the opportunity to move forward on strong climate action without the Legislature acting,” Connolly said. “There’s much more the Legislature needs to do, but this sets targets on where our state needs to go on greenhouse gas emissions.”
Brown’s order mandates state agencies reduce the carbon levels recorded in 1995 by 45% by 2035. It further demands the carbon levels recorded in 1990 be reduced by 90% by 2050.
In addition, Brown ordered the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality Commission to set and enforce pollution caps on transportation fuels, natural gas and large industrial polluters. (The caps will decline over time to meet the state’s greenhouse gas reduction goals.)
“Immediate and comprehensive efforts are needed to tackle this scourge that is devastating the Oregon we know and love, and a smart approach can both protect the environment and grow our economy,” Brown said when she signed the order.
Republicans were predictably rankled. “The governor is ignoring Oregonians,” Senate Republican Leader Herman Baertschiger Jr. (R-Grants Pass) said in an official response.
“She is not listening to three-quarters of the state or the 28 counties that signed proclamations against the cap-and-trade concept,” Baertschiger said. “It’s obvious Kate Brown is not Oregon’s governor. She is Portland’s governor, and as she promised, she is serving revenge, cold and slowly.”
(Asked in 2019 if she planned to punish Republicans by vetoing their legislation, Brown said only, “Revenge is a dish best served cold and slowly.”)
State Sen. Jeff Golden (D-Ashland) offered a formal rebuttal to Baertschiger.
“Gov. Brown was soundly elected by our whole state, and the fact that some Oregonians disagree with her on this issue doesn’t change that,” Golden said. “And on this particular issue, she happens to be carrying out the will of the sizable majority of voters in my district — 300 miles south of Portland — who sent me to Salem.”
Oregonians from Ashland to Portland this month may have choked on a portent of things to come. Much of Oregon remains under an air quality alert after high winds spread smoke from wildfires through many parts of the state, and tens of thousands have been forced to evacuate. At least 10 people have died and dozens remain missing amid the Oregon wildfires, which have burned more than 1 million acres.
“This is truly the bellwether for climate change on the West Coast,” Brown said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation. “And this is a wake-up call for all of us that we have got to do everything in our power to tackle climate change.”
“There will be a vaccine for the coronavirus. There’s no vaccine for the climate crisis.”
Nathan Gilles, a former science communicator with the Pacific Northwest Climate Impacts Research Consortium at Oregon State University, told Streets Roots that Oregonians can expect more of the same.
“Wildfires have increased in size and frequency in the Western United States in recent decades,” Giles said. “Rising temperatures due to human-caused climate change is a significant factor. This trend is expected to continue into the future as rising temperatures make conditions ideal for larger, more destructive wildfires in the Pacific Northwest.”
Wildfires contribute to major ecological changes, helping to shift the composition of the Pacific Northwest’s forests, he said.
According to researchers at the Consortium, 55% of the ability of vegetation to burn (given the right ignition source) between 1975 and 2015 is due to warming caused by human activity.
“Declines in spring mountain snowpack, summer soil moisture and fuel moisture across the mountain ranges of the western United States are projected to increase the fire potential in many forests,” Giles said.
“The greatest declines in summer soil and fuel moisture are projected for the Cascade mountains, making it one of the most at-risk areas in the Western United States for increasing fire activity under climate change,” he said.
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Consortium researchers say the climate crisis is expected to increase the prevalence of extremely large fires (the top 5% to 10% of fires that burn more than 19 square miles.
The area burned each year is expected to increase as the Pacific Northwest heats up — tripling from roughly 0.5% in the 20th century to 1.5 % for the late 21st century in the region west of the Cascades’ crest.
Overall, according to the Consortium, the Pacific Northwest warmed by 0.7 degree Celsius during the 20th century. That warming continued in recent years and is expected to continue throughout this century.
The OSU researchers report that the region is likely to be 1 to 8 degrees warmer by 2100 than it was during the second half of the 20th century. This could result in a series of cascading consequences — including winter flooding, summer drought, raging wildfires and rising sea levels.
“We have less than a decade to make these major changes to avoid these tipping points,” said Connolly, of Climate Solutions. “We can’t wait around to see if people believe in a climate crisis or not.”
Yet she said she understands if everything seems overwhelming at the moment. “There’s nothing like overlapping crises,” Connolly said. “It’s definitely felt like all of these crises and deferred actions have created a perfect storm. The climate crisis is a threat multiplier.”
Nora Apter, the climate program director of the Oregon Environmental Council, told Street Roots that crises such as climate change, systemic racism and public health are not as separate as they may seem.
For example, she said, climate issues disproportionately affect farmworkers, tribes and other communities of color. “We really view climate change as a parallel crisis to these other crises we’re facing,” she said.
Viewed from that perspective, the pandemic may not be a distraction from the climate crisis. “Distraction is not the right word, but in some ways, the pandemic has underscored that we can’t address one of these issues without addressing the others,” Apter said.
Connolly agreed. “The solutions aren’t mutually exclusive,” she said. “The solutions have to address all of the systemic problems.”
Brown’s executive order hit its first milestone in May when a dozen department heads submitted their preliminary reports on what they hope to achieve. Officials at the Department of Energy started by updating its appliance standards. The updates should be completed next month.
“We’ve already seen quite a bit in the past few months since the executive order was signed,” Apter said.
She added that her organization is making sure people in marginalized communities have a voice. “We’ll be doing outreach to communities to make sure they’re included in the process,” she said. “Not everyone can take 4 1/2 hours out of their days to attend workshops.”
Connolly said environmentalists want to make sure marginalized people and those left behind by new clean energy systems benefit from green technology.
“Clean power and transportation will create new jobs, lower the cost of energy and improve air quality and health,” she said. “We must be truly intentional in how we create policy so communities on the front lines of the climate crisis are the first to benefit from these policies.”
Apter said Brown’s order demonstrates Oregon’s leadership on climate issues. “Another thing the executive order does is that it strengthens and expands Oregon’s clean fuel program,” she said. “That will make it the strongest clean fuel program in the nation.”
The federal government is another story.
“I want to call out the disconnect between what state officials are doing while Trump is rolling back the Clean Air Act,” Apter said. “We have a lot of progress to be really excited about in Oregon.”
However, a lawsuit has been filed against Brown’s executive order by the advocacy group Oregon Business Industry and similar organizations. “There’s a lot of corporations hiding behind these business groups,” Connolly said.
And before wildfire smoke enveloped the city last week, Portland saw smog alerts for the past two months. “All of it has stayed steady,” Connolly said of local pollution. “A lot of our industrial practices have continued and not made a big dent. It’s killing people in Black neighborhoods.”
People are often asked to make an ultimately false choice between bolstering the economy or preserving the environment, she added. It’s not an either/or proposition.
“I’m never one to celebrate the economy going down,” she said. “We can continue, and we can thrive. It’s all about the systems we use. It’s not about stopping the economy at all. It’s about transitioning it to cleaner ways of powering it.”
Connolly said she takes encouragement from the Oregon Metro Council voting unanimously July 16 to refer a roughly $5 billion transportation bond measure to the November ballot.
The bond includes safety upgrades with an emphasis on racial equality, she said. It also makes TriMet, Oregon’s biggest consumer of diesel fuel, entirely electric.
“There’s a lot to like in that package,” Connolly said.
What she likes most, she said, is that Oregon has a rare opportunity to help build a better world in the wake of the pandemic. “We have a failed way of doing things, and more and more people are realizing we can’t go back to the old ways,” she said.
“There’s been a very real realization that the status quo in business isn’t working,” she said. “Society has ground to halt from an invisible virus, and people have realized how much of this has been harming Black and brown communities.”
The window of opportunity is narrow, she added.
“We can’t kick the can down the road or lose more years from not taking action,” she said. “How we rebuild will determine if we’re locking in pollution for the next generation. What kind of society do we want to be? The status quo isn’t working.”
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Connolly said she sometimes wishes the Legislature didn’t convene so early in the year in winter weather. Lawmakers should convene when it’s 100 degrees outside and the sky is covered in smoke, she said.
“You shouldn’t become an elected official in the middle of a climate crisis if you don’t intend to do something about it,” Connolly said. “There will be a vaccine for the coronavirus. There’s no vaccine for the climate crisis.”
Apter said she hopes environmentalists can get legislation through Republican obstacles but acknowledged it’s a formidable task.
“The climate crisis is so urgent that we really need sweeping solutions at every level,” she said. “It’s not just executive action. We will definitely need to look at the Legislature and keep things moving on climate. It’s really unconscionable that the legislators walked out on this issue.”
The Oregon Environmental Council has a legislative director who meets with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Of course, “meets” is a broadly defined term during a pandemic.
“Right now, those meetings are awkward,” Apter said. “We will definitely try to move the ball forward in the Legislature, but it’s anyone’s guess.”
Connolly said she doesn’t understand why there is so much inertia when it comes to environmental action. “We know what the solutions are,” she said. “We just have to prioritize and accelerate them.”
Ultimately, Apter said, the pandemic serves as a fable. The moral of the story is that a better, cleaner world can be created — if people work for it.
“The pandemic has further reinforced the fact that if we listen to science, we have an opportunity not just to beat the impact; we can make sure we come back stronger and more resilient,” she said. “We can hopefully look back at the global response to this and look at the countries that were able to respond quickly and collectively.”
Her words echo what McCall tried to tell Oregonians almost 60 years ago as he urged them to think of themselves as both the creators and victims of pollution.
He closed “Pollution in Paradise” by saying:
“Our air and water are stained in countless ways as we mistreat our precious heritage, and it could be only the beginning, for how far pollution marches in Oregon is a matter in final analysis of citizen responsibility.”