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S tr e e t R o o ts • A u g . 3 1 -S e p t. 6 , 2 0 1 8 New s Page 5 CARBON, from page 4 legislators at the caucus discussed their impacts and how small changes to those sectors could help drive transitions to cleaner resources. On the coast, dairies are big business. Tillamook Creamery has 78 dairy farms in Tillamook County alone. But cows, primarily through burping, are Oregon’s largest emitter of methane, a gas that according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate/ Change has a warming effect 86 times as potent as carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. “Cows are adding to our problems with greenhouse gas emissions,” said Sen. Michael Dembrow (D-Portland), who is a co-vice chair of the Joint Interim Committee on Carbon Reduction. “It may be that we can change their diet and add some kelp to it and that will help, but what we also need to do is make sure that we are disposing of their waste appropriately using bio-digester technology.” He said this will not only prevent some greenhouse gases from being emitted but the waste can also be used to create energy. The other omitted greenhouse gas emitter, logging, is the No. 1 source of carbon pollution in the state according to two recent studies, one from the Center for Sustainable Economy and one from Oregon State University. But critics say these reports don’t accurately account for the carbon stored in wood products once they leave the forest or the carbon that is offset by using products such as cross-laminated timber in place of building,,materials with* larger carbon g . footprints, such as steel or concrete. Just how much carbon is stored in forest products will soon be examined by the Oregon Department of Forestry, said Angus Duncan, who chairs the Oregon Global Warming Commission. The commission’s draft report to the Legislature from its Forest Carbon Accounting Project will be complete once that data are included. _ The commission’s findings indicate Oregon’s forests have remarkable carbon sequestration potential - on par with Amazon rainforests, Duncan said. “The core message of our work,” Duncan said, “is you’ve got to do the math, and you’ve got to know what the carbon consequences are of your choices in the forest ® to harvest, to not harvest, to thin and do prescribed burns, all sorts of management choices, or just leaving the forest alone. All of those have carbon consequences, and we can calculate those now, and if we can, we need to.” Forestry’s role in Oregon’s carbon- reduction future, as discussed at the summit, would be more about promoting Oregon’s wood products and increased thinning to avoid intense wildfires than using the state’s rainforests to their full carbon-sequestration potential. “You won’t hear a word about clear-cutting in there,” John Talberth, president of the Center for Sustainable Economy, told Street Roots as he held up the side of ä banner highlighting Oregon clear-cuts outside the sum m it He said his organization was there to “shake things up.” On Aug. 22, Lincoln City was blanketed in wildfire smoke as summit attendees entered the casino. Many speakers - including Oregon’s Democratic U.S. senators, Ron GO DEEPER ONLINE Read previous coverage of climate-change issues at news.streetroots.org. The true east of cattle Street Roots investigates how Oregon’s 1.3 million cows are affecting the environment and the state’s economy. news.streetroots. W W i l l j « t « f » J i l A lesson IbmCalfenfe lead of its neighbor to the south: price carbon news.streetroots.org/califcaptrade The forester's dilemma Some timber producers say it’s time for a cultural shift in how we think about logging and forests’ role in the ecosystem. news.streetroots.org/timberdilemma Wyden and Jeff Merkley, as well as local function of their forests from timber to politicians and industry representatives - carbon storage, explained tribal council seized on the opportunity to stress the need member Carina Miller to summitgoers. The for thinning and fuel reduction in Oregon’s tribe has already started to do this with forests, which they said have become 24,500 acres of their forestland in California overstocked with fuel following years of fire under that state’s cap-and-trade program, and suppression. it hopes to do the same in Oregon. “We have to reduce the carbon being “Bottom line, we need to move from an emitted from these wildfires due to the extractive economy to a restorative one,” changing conditions on the landscape,”; said Miller said. Rep. David Brock Smith (R-Port Orford)? - During a debate on whether Oregon’s Although thinning when coupled with forests should contribute to worldwide' carbon reduction efforts prescribed b u rn in g is show n through renewable products to reduce the intensity of " Y o u 'v e g o t to k n o w or by sequestering carbon, wildfires in some instances, Elaine Oniel, of Consortium ramped-up logging might not w h a t th e c a rb o n c o n be the answer if carbon se qu en ces a re o f y e a r for Research and Renewable Industrial Materials, had a reduction is the goal. c h o ic e s 1» th e fo re s t ** different take. That’s because logging to h arvest? to n o t h a r She recalled visiting a releases more carbon back vest? to t h in a n d d o gathering of architects and into the atmosphere than engineers in June at New p ro s c rib e d burns? a ll fore, said Oregon State York’s Empire State University researcher Beverly s o rts o f m a n a g e m e n t Building, where the focus Law, who studied carbon choices? o r ju s t le a v was their desire to build release from Oregon fires in g th e fo re s t a lo n e . more sustainably with between 2001 and 2015. M il o f th o s e h a v e greener materials. During an afternoon panel, “These are the builders of Law,highlighted two land-use c a rb o n consequences? the world. Many of them a n d w e c a n c a lc u la te strategies that she said have own international been shown to both increase th o s e now? a n d I f w e companies, and they say we carbon storage and lower can? w e n e e d to . build the equivalent of a carbon emissions the most in ANGUS DUNCAN, New York City every 35 Oregon forests: increasing .CHAIRMAN, OREGON GLOBAL days,” she'said. She then the harvest cycle from 45 to WARMINGOOMMISSfjON posed the question of what 80 years and setting aside materials would be used to additional carbon reserves. construct all those buildings. These approaches, she said, Would it be wood? Concrete? Steel? have the added benefit of watershed “If we’re going to build it out of wood, protection and increased biodiversity. which is the lowest carbon intensity of all She also recommended taking preventive those materials, then the question is, where action in forests that are vulnerable to fire, is it going to come from?” she asked. “There such as in Southwestern Oregon and areas in is an imperative for the forest sector in the Eastern Oregon, but said that prescriptive Pacific Northwest to pick up that grand approach should not be applied broadly challenge and say, how canwe supply across all forests. materials to the world to address this global It’s also possible to make carbon problem? We have some of the best growth sequestration profitable in a carbon-pricing rates in the world, and we have laws - a system, but to date, sinking carbon is system of sustainability.” pennies on the dollar to harvesting timber. But the decades-old debate over how to Tribal governments, however, have some manage Oregon’s forests shouldn’t get in the unique mechanisms that can make it pencil way of achieving cap-and-invest policies, said out. The Confederated Tribes of Warm Cass Moseley, after some heated comments Springs plans to switch the revenue-making from the audience and much back and forth among other panelists. Moseley is a research professor with the Institute for a Sustainable Environment at the University of Oregon. Climate change is not something where we have to have an industry versus environment conversation. We need to have industry and environment conversation,” Moseley said. While Oregon has been flirting with cap- and-invest for several years, other states, provinces and countries have already acted - from China to Quebec and California to the East Coast, where several states have implemented cap-and-trade on their energy sectors. Oregon could eventually link up with these existing carbon markets should it succeed in implementing its own system. And, if Oregon adopts cap-and-invest in 2019, it will be the second state to cap carbon across multiple sectors, and according to lawmakers, the first “normal” state to initiate such a program. Oregon’s economy and resources are vastly smaller than California’s, giving Oregon the opportunity to create a more realistic path toward pricing carbon for other states to follow. “The natural resource areas, in general, are outside of the cap and trade,” said summit organizer Sen. Arnie Roblan (D-Coos Bay), “but they’re big contributors to the solution. So how do we make sure that we invest in them, with some of this resource, and do it in the most efficient and best way that we can do that?” Roblan and other, coastal lawmakers are looking for ways the “invest” portion of cap- and-invest can provide their communities with economic growth. Harnessing wave energy, using seaweed’s carbon sequestration ability and increasing Oregon’s production of cross-laminated timber are all on the table. “We’ve been having a long and robust conversation about the role of carbon pricing in Oregon’s economy going well back over 10 years,” said Kristen Sheeran, a carbon policy adviser to Gov. Kate Brown. She said the root cause of climate change is the market’s failure to place a value on limiting greenhouse gases, and this legislation would correct that failure. “We invested a lot of money to do the studies we need, to have the staff we need, to have the conversations we need, to follow up on the work that’s been done over the last two years,” House Speaker Kotek said during a lunchtime panel. She said whatever legislation comes out of the process should do two things: “reduce carbon and serve the economic needs of our state.” Sitting next to her, Senate President Courtney added that earlier this year, “I made it very clear at the time, to the business lobby... we’re not doing it in ’18, but we’re doing it in T9, and you better come to the table because if you don’t, don’t come to Peter.” Courtney said that with leadership on the , committee coming from Dembrow, a Democrat, and Cliff Bentz (R-Ohtario), he’s hoping Oregon’s carbon reduction legislation can be a bipartisan effort. “It should have been done years ago,” Courtney said. “We have a crisis here.” emily@streetroots.org; Twitter @greenwrites
