S tr e e t R o o ts • A u g . 3 1 -S e p t. 6 , 2 0 1 8
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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