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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (June 23, 2016)
OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 2016 GUEST COLUMN Founded in 1873 Time to ix broken federal coal system By BOB REES For The Daily Astorian STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager CARL EARL, Systems Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager What is Kate Brown afraid of? Herself B arely a week passes when Kate Brown refuses to be a leader. The governor’s latest proile in timidity is her backing out of the longstanding tradition of debat- ing her challenger in front of the audience of the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association during its July conven- tion. That quadrennial encounter between the Democratic and Republican candidates has sparked the beginning of the campaign season. Paris Achen of our state- sive on an array of issues. Brown can afford this house bureau reported in Monday’s edition that game of “ind the governor” Brown’s aides were anxious because Oregon has become about what questions would a one-party state. When the be asked during the debate. Republican Party became the Who would do the asking, captive of religious conser- vatives more than a decade they wondered. Those questions beit a ago, it ceased to develop a irst-time candidate, not bench of younger, strong someone who’s been to mainstream candidates. the polls as many times as Dr. Bud Pierce, the Brown. GOP’s nominee for gov- And what is Brown afraid ernor, is a irst-time candi- of? date. That Gov. Brown is so Herself. Following an afraid of Pierce (and appar- impressive beginning in ently of the news media) the wake of Gov. John that she won’t appear at Kitzhaber’s sudden resigna- the ONPA convention tells tion, Brown has receded from us more about her frailties view and become nonrespon- than Pierce. Just say ‘no’ to gun ownership mong the many sad ironies surrounding the U.S. cultural wars about irearms is the vast growth in gun numbers during the Obama administration, whose detractors routinely accuse of conspiring to end private gun ownership. Fear of this nonexistent threat has resulted in enough ire- arm sales to ight off an out- er-space invasion. Data on federal crim- inal background checks show a continuing surge in gun buying in Oregon and around the nation. In the irst ive months of 2016, Oregonians bought at least 126,738 irearms, based on statistics from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), nearly double the 66,665 sold in the same months in 2006. The NICS does not include sales between private individuals and certain other exceptions that may add tens of thou- sands of additional sales to the actual total. Since Obama’s inau- guration in January 2009, A Oregonians have purchased nearly 1.8 million irearms covered by the NICS sys- tem. In 2016, there were only 1.5 million occupied homes in Oregon. Do all these weapons make us safer? Far more Americans use our weap- ons to commit suicide than to commit murder. “In the U.S., more than 10,000 Americans will likely be killed in gun murders this year. Another 20,000 will likely be lost to gun suicide. The total number of gun deaths and violent injuries will be close to 100,000,” The Guardian newspa- per reported this week. “In absolute terms, around 33,500 lives are lost each year. That’s roughly one every 15 minutes — about the same number of people as are killed on America’s roads.” Leaving all the politics aside, the facts tell us we are safer not having irearms at home. If you are contem- plating buying one, take Nancy Reagan’s famous advice to heart: Just say no. Editorials that appear on this page are written by Publisher Steve Forrester and Matt Winters, editor of the Chinook Observer and Coast River Business Journal, or staff members from the EO Media Group’s sister newspapers. his week in Seattle, the Department of the Interior is providing the public with the opportunity to provide input on the federal coal program. T Most people don’t know that publicly owned coal makes up 40 percent of all coal burned in the U.S. each year — but the rules governing the federal coal pro- gram haven’t been updated in three decades. Because of this, the current law is outdated and environmentally irresponsible, and contains gaping loopholes that have allowed coal companies to cheat taxpayers out of revenue and avoid government accountability. Studies have esti- mated at least $1 billion in lost rev- enue per year for the last 30 years; funds that could have been put to good use in our communities, rather than lining the pockets of coal com- pany CEOs. Science is clear that coal pollu- tion is driving the increasingly hot ocean and river temperatures and their acidiication to lethal levels for our salmon and countless other spe- cies. We’ve already seen our Paciic shellish industry take a hit: in 2007 we began to see the irst large-scale die-offs that have been proven to be caused by ocean acid- an examination. Just one iication driven by coal example: coal companies pollution. only pay 12.5 percent roy- More recently, the alty rate on product mined Whiskey Creek Shellish from federal lands, while hatchery on the shores of offshore oil and gas leases Oregon’s cleanest estu- generate 18.75 percent. ary was losing up to 80 And unlike coal, revenues percent of their juveniles from offshore gas and oil due to ocean acidiication leases are reinvested into caused by the uptake of the Land and Water Con- Bob carbon dioxide from the servation Fund, which Rees atmosphere, threaten- increases public access ing a multi-million dol- and improves to city and We can state facilities associated lar industry. Strip mines and with outdoor recreation. failed mine reclamation no longer For too long, coal sites cause irreparable companies have been afford to taking advantage damage to our pristine, of a ishable waterways, not play the broken and outdated to mention the contribu- program full of loop- tion to climate change ignorance holes and giveaways at that’s affecting our the expense of taxpay- card. oceans and snowpack. ers and our land, air, And let’s not forget: water, ish and wildlife. our salmon are the heart and soul We can no longer afford to play of the northwest. As a healthy food the ignorance card when it comes source, and as an icon, they connect to fossil fuels here in Oregon, or us personally to our rivers and our on our public lands. There are bet- oceans, and their sustainable har- ter ways to meet our needs socially, vest supports our economy, from environmentally and economically. our biggest cities to our smallest Let it be our nation’s citizens that towns, with hundreds of millions of continue to drive this conversation. recreational dollars every year. It may be our best investment for A comprehensive review of the the future of our children. federal coal program is the com- Bob Rees is a sixth genera- mon-sense next step in mitigating this tion Oregonian, professional ish- damage. The program has not been ing guide and executive director overhauled since the Reagan admin- for the Association of Northwest istration, and is greatly overdue for Steelheaders. Photo Illustration from AdobeStock Images We are in another age of discovery By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN New York Times News Service H ave we been here before? I know — it feels as if the internet, virtual reality, Donald Trump, Facebook, sequenc- ing of the human genome and machines that can reason better than people constitute a change in the pace of change without precedent. But we’ve actually been through an extraordinarily rapid transition like this before in history — a transition we can learn a lot Thomas L. from. Friedman Ian Gol- din, director of the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University, and Chris Kutarna, also of Oxford Martin, have just pub- lished a book — Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance — about les- sons we can draw from the period 1450 to 1550, known as the Age of Discovery. It was when the world made a series of great leaps for- ward, propelled by da Vinci, Michel- angelo, Copernicus and Columbus, that produced the Renaissance and reshaped science, education, manu- facturing, communications, politics and geopolitics. “Gutenberg’s printing press pro- vided the trigger,” Goldin told me by email, “by lipping knowledge production and exchange from tight scarcity to radical abundance. Before that, the Catholic churches monopo- lized knowledge, with their hand- written Latin manuscripts locked up in monasteries. The Gutenberg press democratized information, and provided the incentive to be lit- erate. Within 50 years, not only had scribes lost their jobs, but the Catho- lic Church’s millennia-old monopoly of power had been torn apart as the printing of Martin Luther’s sermons ignited a century of religious wars.” Meanwhile, Goldin added, Copernicus upended the prevailing God-given notions of heaven and earth “by inding that far from the sun revolving around the Earth, the Earth rotated around the sun,” and “voyages of discovery by Colum- Was there a Donald Trump back then? bus, da Gama and Magellan tore up millennia-old maps of the ‘known’ world.” Those were the mother of all dis- ruptions and led to the parallels with today. “Now, like then, new media have democratized information exchange, amplifying the voices of those who feel they have been injured in the upheaval,” said Goldin. “Now, like then, public leaders and public insti- tutions have failed to keep up with rapid change, and popular trust has been deeply eroded.” Now, like then, “this is the best moment in history to be alive” — human health, literacy, aggregate wealth and education are lourishing — and “there are more scientists alive today than in all pre- vious generations.” And, yet many people feel worse off. Because, as in the Renaissance, key anchors in people’s lives — like the workplace and community — are being fundamentally dislocated. The pace of technological change is out- stripping the average person’s ability to adapt. Now, like then, said Gol- din, “sizable parts of the popula- tion found their skills were no longer needed, or they lived in places left behind, so inequality grew.” At the same time, “new planetary scale sys- tems of commerce and information exchange led to immense improve- ments in choices and accelerating innovations which made some peo- ple fabulously rich.” Was there a Donald Trump back then? “Michelangelo and Machiavelli’s Florence suffered a shocking pop- ular power-taking when Girolamo Savonarola, a midlevel friar from Ferrara, who lived from 1452 to 1498, exploded from obscurity in the 1490s to enthrall Florentines, who felt left behind economically or cul- turally, with sermons that laid blame upon the misguided policies and moral corruption of their leaders,” said Goldin. “He and his zealous supporters, though a small minority, swept away the Medici establish- ment and seized control of the city’s councils. “From there, Savonarola launched an ugly campaign of pub- lic puriication, introducing radical laws including against homosexual- ity, and attacked public intellectuals in an act of intimidation that history still remembers as the Bonire of the Vanities. Savonarola was amongst the irst to tap into the information revolution of the time, and while others produced long sermons and treatises, Savonarola disseminated short pamphlets, in what may be thought of as the equivalent of polit- ical tweets.” The establishment politicians of the day, who were low energy, “underestimated the power of that new information revolution to move beyond scientiic and cultural ideas” to amplify populist voices challeng- ing authority. Yikes! How do we blunt that? “More risk-taking is required when things change more rap- idly, both for workers who have to change jobs and for businesses who have to constantly innovate to stay ahead,” Goldin argued. Govern- ment’s job is to strengthen the safety nets and infrastructure so individu- als and companies can be as daring — in terms of learning, adapting and investing in themselves — as they need to be. At the same time, when the world gets this tightly woven, America “needs to be more, not less, engaged, with the rest of the world,” because “the threats posed by cli- mate change, pandemics, cyberat- tacks or terror will not be reduced by America withdrawing.” Then, as now, walls stopped working. “Cannons and gunpowder came to Europe that could penetrate or go over walls and books could bring ideas around them,” he said. Then, like now, walls only made you poorer, dumber and more insecure.
