4A
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2019
The Observer
OUR VIEW
Both sides
must work
together
Oregon Republicans most likely clearly understood
at the end of the last session that the controversial
carbon emission issue wasn’t going to go away.
Already, one of the architects of the carbon emis-
sion reduction bill that failed during the last session
is hard at work crafting a new proposal.
Readers probably remember that Senate Republi-
cans walked out of the 2019 session, a decision that
destroyed hopes by Democrats to push their favored
carbon emission blueprint into law.
The bill was designed to slash the state’s green-
house gas emissions and generate funds to use on a
host of environmental programs.
There is also, apparently, a push by an environ-
mental group to put a carbon emission reduction
measure before voters.
Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, the lawmaker
who led the effort for the carbon emission reduction
legislation, is working to simplify a new bill and that
should be good news for everyone, especially voters.
That’s because the original piece of legislation was
a confusing tome that created a host of questions
from critics.
A more narrowly tailored piece of legislation is
needed because there isn’t any doubt — or shouldn’t
be — that climate change is real and we all need to
discover a way to address it.
But we can’t develop a solution on the backs of the
rural residents of Oregon. Nor barge ahead with a
solution that ignores the valid concerns of those of us
who live and work and play in the great rural areas
of Oregon.
Dembrow and his Democratic supporters on a new
carbon emission bill must fi nd a middle ground with
Republicans on this issue, and that is going to be a
pretty tall order.
The well between the two parties on this issue
has, indeed, been poisoned. But that shouldn’t mean
lawmakers throw up their hands and walk away.
This is an important issue, and just because it was
bungled in the last session doesn’t mean it should
be discarded. What must be avoided is another long,
drawn-out political battle that ends with the minor-
ity party walking away from the capital.
No one is going to say fi nding a solution will be
easy. It won’t be. Democracy is a messy business
sometimes, and the last session’s battles over the
carbon reduction initiative clearly reinforce that
scenario.
The Democrats staked their legislation success
last session on a bill that was essentially a prototype
on political overreach. They must work with their
political brethren in both the House and Senate to
fi nd a viable solution.
MY VOICE
Fuel reduction is a flawed assumption
P
roponents of thinning for “fuel
reductions” on the Lostine River
operate under a number of fl awed as-
sumptions, including that fuel build-
up is responsible for large blazes.
Yes, you need some fuel and igni-
tion, but fuel and ignition aren’t
what creates large fi res. If this were
the case, the largest fi res in Oregon
would be in the Coast Range where
fuel biomass is many times higher
than anything found in Eastern
Oregon. But large fi res are rare in
the Coast Range because it is too cool
and moist to burn.
What drives all large fi res is cli-
mate/weather.
For instance, the Camp Fire that
consumed Paradise, California,
burned through two previous burns
(fuel reduction), through extensively
clearcut private timberlands (fuel
reduction) and Forest Service fuel
reduction treatments. None of these
precluded the Camp Fire from burn-
ing down the town during extreme
fi re weather when winds up to 80
mph drove the fi re at rates of one
football fi eld a second.
The qualifi er “extreme fi re condi-
tions” is critical. Some 99% of all
fi res burn under less than extreme
conditions where fi re spread is slow
and fi res are easily controlled — with
or without fuel reductions. But under
conditions of extreme weather de-
fi ned as drought, high temperatures,
low humidity and high winds, almost
nothing stops fi res.
This is important these extreme-
weather-driven blazes are the only
fi res that really matter, and they
are exactly the fi res that make “fuel
reductions” ineffective.
That is why numerous fi re ecolo-
gists have concluded that thinning
and “uel reductions are futile. For ex-
ample, fi re ecologists at the FS Mis-
soula Fire Lab wrote in a research
About the author
George Wuerthner, of Bend, is an
ecologist and author.
My Voice columns
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paper: “Extreme environmental
conditions … overwhelmed most fuel
treatment effects.… This included
almost all treatment methods includ-
ing prescribed burning and thin-
ning.… Suppression efforts had little
benefi t from fuel modifi cations.”
More than 250 scientists in a
letter to Congress said the same
when they wrote: “Thinning is most
often proposed to reduce fi re risk
and lower fi re intensity.… However,
as the climate changes, most of our
fi res will occur during extreme fi re
weather (high winds and tempera-
tures, low humidity, low vegetation
moisture). These fi res, like the ones
burning in the West this summer,
will affect large landscapes, regard-
less of thinning, and, in some cases,
burn hundreds or thousands of acres
in just a few days.”
Keep in mind that the Eagle Fire
jumped across a mile and a half of
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A division of
the Columbia River where there was
“zero fuel” and ignited forests on the
Washington side of the Columbia
Gorge.
The Lostine River Canyon is only
about 1-2-mile-wide in most places.
Under extreme fi re conditions, em-
bers are regularly blown 1-2 miles
ahead of the fi re front and could
easily jump across the entire canyon
— fuel reduction or not.
Even more critical is that thin-
ning has been shown to increase fi re
spread in many instances.
A review of Western fi res by the
National Research Council found
that “logging and clearcutting can
cause rapid regeneration of shrubs
and trees that can create highly
fl ammable fuel conditions within a
few years of cutting. Without ad-
equate treatment of small woody
material, logging may exacerbate fi re
risk rather than lower it.”
That is why another recent study
that looked at 1,500 fi res across the
West in ponderosa pine and mixed
conifer forests (exactly like those
found in the Lostine) and found that
“forests with higher levels of pro-
tection (like parks and wilderness)
had lower (fi re) severity values even
though they are generally identifi ed
as having the highest overall levels
of biomass and fuel.”
Much of the upper Lostine Canyon
is dominated by dense lodgepole pine
and subalpine fi r forests that have
long fi re rotations of hundreds of
years because they are usually too
moist and shady to burn.
The best way to protect homes in
the Lostine Valley is to reduce the
fl ammability of the homes and the
immediate area surrounding them.
As Fire Researcher Jack Cohen has
concluded, treatments more than
100-200 feet from a home provide no
additional safety benefi t.
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