Opinion
A4
Thursday, March 31, 2022
OUR VIEW
Private enterprise
shines in climate
change eff orts
ot to be critical of government, but if you
want something done, you’re usually best off
looking to private enterprise.
It’s not that government can’t do it, it’s just that
government too often gets in the way of itself —
and everyone else.
Take, for example, eff orts to slow climate change.
At the state and federal levels, a hodgepodge of cli-
mate programs has emerged over the years. Most are
aimed at jacking up oil and gas prices.
By doing that, they are supercharging infl ation,
which is now 7.9%, the highest it’s been since 1982.
The federal government has been particularly inept
in its climate eff orts. It has subsidized “green” com-
panies such as Tesla, which in turn has built factories
overseas, including China, the biggest climate pol-
luter on the planet. That country produces 30% of the
world’s carbon dioxide and continues to add to its fl eet
of 1,110 coal-fi red power generation plants to run all of
those Chinese-built Teslas.
By comparison, India operates the second-largest
number of coal-fi red plants, 285.
In the meantime, the federal government has also
discouraged domestic oil and natural gas production
while going to countries such as Venezuela, Iran and
Saudi Arabia looking for more oil.
In Oregon, the unelected bureaucrats in the
Department of Environment Quality are doing an
end-run around the Legislature with their “Climate
Protection Program.”
In Washington, the Department of Ecology is
aiming at forcing refi neries to reduce their greenhouse
gases by 28% in four years.
That means consumers and businesses — you —
will ultimately be saddled with higher gasoline and
diesel prices.
The carbon footprints of Oregon and Washington
are minuscule compared to those of China, India and
Russia, or even California. What we in the North-
west do to slow climate change matters, but not very
much. Washington produces about 0.19% of global
carbon emissions, while Oregon produces about
0.17%. That’s according to each state and the Our
World in Data website.
With that in mind, we were greatly interested in a
new private enterprise eff ort that appears to have all
of the trappings of success. Organic Valley, a cooper-
ative of organic dairy farmers, last month announced
its Carbon Insetting Program as a means of achieving
carbon neutrality by 2050.
This program is the essence of simplicity. Instead of
setting up some confusing government-style eff ort that
requires a battalion of new employees, Organic Valley
will pay co-op members for reducing their carbon
footprint. More effi cient lighting and coolers, installing
solar panels, planting trees and better manure manage-
ment are among the activities that will reduce or off set
carbon dioxide and methane production.
The eff orts will be certifi ed by a third party, Sus-
tainCERT, to determine the impacts.
In return, the farmers will receive the market rate,
about $15, for every metric ton of carbon that is either
sequestered or otherwise prevented from entering the
atmosphere.
Others in agriculture are developing eff orts that will
similarly reduce their impact on the climate.
They all have several characteristics in common.
They are simple, meaningful and eff ective.
Those are three characteristics generally missing
from government climate eff orts.
A suggestion: Maybe the government should stick
to encouraging private enterprise to reduce its carbon
footprint instead of pushing programs that will cost
consumers, businesses, farmers and ranchers.
Our confi dence is in private enterprise. If govern-
ment wants to help, that’s fi ne. It just shouldn’t get in
the way.
N
Oregon faces bleak water outlook
RANDY
STAPILUS
OTHER VIEWS
arlier this month Gov. Kate
Brown, at the request of local
offi cials, declared a drought
emergency for Klamath County
when snowpack in the area fell to
60% of normal.
That news didn’t make the top
headlines on the county government’s
website last week, but another water
emergency did: A serious drying of
residential wells.
An information sheet from the
county said, “Temperatures have been
warmer than normal; precipitation has
been signifi cantly lower than normal;
soil moisture has been at or near his-
toric lows as have stream fl ows. As
a result of these drought conditions,
aquifers that support many domestic
wells in the Klamath Project area have
received less recharge than normal
resulting in an unprecedented number
of domestic wells going dry or pro-
ducing less water than is needed.”
Some help is coming.
The state Department of Human
Services is making water deliveries to
owners of dry wells through March,
at the county’s request. How long that
will last is uncertain.
Of course, if you expect a water
supply problem to hit fi rst anywhere
in Oregon, the Klamath Basin, based
on all the struggles it has had over
many years, would be a good fi rst bet.
But it won’t be the last.
Improved precipitation in the last
three months has brought snowpack
levels at least closer to normal — but
not all the way yet. At the end of last
year Mount Hood webcams showed
hardly any snow on Oregon’s highest
mountain. The snowpack’s measure
there near the end of 2021 stood at
E
0.3 inches, about 2% of the historic
median.
Historic snowpack levels by
decade (going back a half century)
were highest in the 80s, nearly as
solid in the 90s, dropped a little in the
2000s, and collapsed in the 2010s.
The snowpack aff ects farmers,
homeowners, businesses — directly
or indirectly, everyone in Oregon.
Some of the best numbers for fi g-
uring where the state is on water
supply can be found in the Snotel
reports, a water data bank run by the
U.S. Department of Agriculture, mea-
suring levels down to checkpoints in
small streams.
One of the key stats is the snow
water equivalent, a quick read on the
snowpack, which supplies a lot of the
runoff water used through the year. A
“percent of median” shows how that
number compares to the past years.
The oldest Snotel chart online,
from 1978, shows a median for the
Malheur watershed at 175, the John
Day at 191, the Willamette at 81
and the Rogue at 68. Those are not
unusual numbers for most years since
then.
This month, just three water basins
— the Coast (treated as a single
basin), the Willamette River and the
Owyhee River — are above normal.
Most of the rest are well below
normal.
This is the regional piece of a
larger picture.
A recent large-scale study of the
changing snowpack by a group of
federal and university researchers
found, “Future mountain snowpacks
are further projected to decline, and
even disappear, but at unknown rates.
While the complete loss of snow is the
worst-case scenario, a plausible situ-
ation … [would involve] a shift from
rare or short term to more persistent
low-to-no snow occurrences.”
The report added, “Low-to-no
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snow will impose a series of cas-
cading hydrologic changes to the
water — energy balance, including
vegetation processes, surface and sub-
surface water storage and, ultimately,
streamfl ow that directly impacts water
management.”
The snowpack problem is not new.
The U.S. Forest Service is among the
organizations that has been looking
into this for some years.
What’s gotten less attention is that
many approaches to dealing with it
are likely to be local and regional.
Many answers to Oregon’s drought
will have to come from Oregon.
What can Oregon do?
Conservation, of course, and some
proposals at the Capitol and else-
where to curb climate change could
help in the long term. More surgical
approaches could accomplish a lot
locally and sooner.
A list of Forest Service options
suggests some of them: Increase
in-stream fl ows with dry-season
water conservation to reduce with-
drawals … Increase upland water
storage … Develop mitigation mea-
sures and strategies to compensate for
loss of snowpack location and dura-
tion … Restore and enhance water
resource function and distribution at
the appropriate watershed level. Pri-
oritize watersheds based on condi-
tion and a variety of resource values,
including wildlife … Reduce riparian
impacts by storing more water on the
landscape.
Along with this: Increase research
into our water management options
so they’re as thoroughgoing as our
research into the size of the problem.
With this message comes the
urgency: We need to do more than
just fret.
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