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Page 4A OPINION (DVW2UHJRQLDQ 7XHVGD\-XQH OTHER VIEWS Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN DANIEL WATTENBURGER Publisher Managing Editor JENNINE PERKINSON TIM TRAINOR Advertising Director Opinion Page Editor OUR VIEW Pope’s call to action goes beyond the environment Is it time for a conversation on gun violence? How do we mark time? In many ways. If we are in the midst of war, the names and dates of various battles mark the passage of time. If we are parents, the dates of our children’s births become milestones. It was striking last week to hear President Barack Obama say that the Charleston shootings that claimed the life of nine black congregants at a Bible study meeting was the 14th mass killing he has responded to during his presidency. One of those was the KRUUL¿F6DQG\+RRN(OHPHQWDU\ 6FKRROPDVVDFUHWKDWFODLPHG children and six adults. The president asked: When will this nation face its epidemic of gun violence? When, indeed? The most telling answer to the president’s question was the silence among Republican presidential candidates and members of Congress. The guns issue is radioactive. It makes cowards of otherwise outspoken men and women. Here in Oregon, we have been less touched by the large cataclysms. But one of the ways we could denote Oregon history is by what Kip Kinkel did in 1998 at Thurston High School. Kinkel NLOOHGWZRDQGZRXQGHG7KHQ there was the Clackamas Town &HQWHUVKRRWLQJVLQZKHUH two people were killed, though it was quickly overshadowed by Sandy Hook three days later. So how does the gun lobby answer President Obama’s question? It says there is never time for a serious discussion of gun violence, that emotions are too high and the culprit is elsewhere. It’s the mentally ill, lax laws letting dangerous people out of prison, or even the victims themselves, for being opposed to gun control. If you can believe that. There is serious literature on the topic, full of ideas that are not apocalyptic. A good reference is 'DYLG+HPHQZD\¶VERRN “Private Guns, Public Health.” Hemenway is one of a group of public health physicians and researchers who have approached gun violence (homicides, accidental shootings, suicides) as a public health concern. The gun lobby was so alarmed by the statistics gathered by these physicians that its congressional allies have prohibited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from keeping track of deaths and accidents caused by guns. No one would suggest we remain similarly ignorant about deaths from drowning or automobile accidents. Here is something we can predict. If Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio or Rand Paul win the presidency, they will be asked regularly — during their four to eight years in the White House — to comment on WKHODWHVWKRUUL¿FJXQPDVVDFUH:H can mark our calendars. Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. I n Pope Francis’ sprawling new And while it includes hopeful encyclical, “Laudato Si’,” there passages, the encyclical’s most pungent are many mansions: a meditation lines are apocalyptic: “Doomsday on biblical ecology, a discussion of predictions can no longer be met with environmental policy, a critique of irony or disdain. We may well be FRQVXPHULVPHYHQDUHÀHFWLRQRQWKH leaving to coming generations debris, perils of social media. GHVRODWLRQDQG¿OWK´ What everyone wants to know, of This pungency is what really course, is whether the pope takes sides distinguishes “Laudato Si’” from prior Ross in our most polarizing debate. And Douthat papal documents. he clearly does. After this document, Francis’ predecessors attempted Comment there’s no doubting where Francis versions of his double pitch — urging stands in the great argument of our time. Roman Catholics to recognize But I don’t mean the argument between environmental devastation as a manifestation liberalism and conservatism. I mean the of the individualism the church has long argument between dynamists and catastrophists. condemned, while inviting secular readers to '\QDPLVWVDUHSHRSOHZKRVHHVWFHQWXU\ consider religious alternatives to our present modernity as a basically successful civilization way of life. But its urgency, sweep, and advancing toward a future that’s better than the DSRFDO\SWLFÀDYRUPD\PDNH³/DXGDWR6L¶´ past. They do not deny that problems exist, but PRUHLPPHGLDWHO\LQÀXHQWLDOPRUHOLNHO\WR they believe we can innovate our way through make both audiences think anew. them while staying on an ever-richer, ever- However, its catastrophism also leaves more-liberated course. this pope more open to empirical criticism. Dynamists of the left tend to put their faith )RULQVWDQFHKHGRHVQ¶WJUDSSOHVXI¿FLHQWO\ in technocratic government; dynamists of the with evidence that the global poor have right, in the genius of free markets. But both become steadily less poor under precisely the assume that modernity is a success story whose world system he decries — a reality that has best days are ahead. complicated implications for environmentalism. Catastrophists, on the other hand, see a Nor are questions related to population global civilization that for all its achievements growth successfully resolved. If resource is becoming more atomized and balkanized, constraints are really as severe as the pope more morally bankrupt, more environmentally implies, and technological solutions as limited despoiled. What’s more, they believe that in power, it isn’t entirely clear how the planet things cannot go on as they are: that the can sustain the steadily growing population trajectory we’re on will end in crisis, disaster, the Catholic vision of marriage and fecundity dégringolade. implies. To credibly make the case that a Like dynamists, catastrophists can be on billions-strong human race can keep having the left or right, stressing different agents large families, you might need a more, well, of our imminent demise. But they’re united dynamist view of the human future than this in believing that current arrangements are encyclical contains. foredoomed, and that only a true revolution can Finally, it’s possible to believe that climate save us. change is happening while doubting that it This is Pope Francis’ position, and the makes “the present world system ... certainly controlling theme of his encyclical. It includes, unsustainable,” as the pope suggests. Perhaps as many liberals hoped and certain conservatives we’ll face a series of chronic but manageable feared, a call to action against climate change, problems instead; perhaps “radical change” can, which will no doubt cause Republicans to in fact, be persistently postponed. squirm during political campaigns to come. ,QGHHGSHUKDSVRXULPPHGLDWHIXWXUH¿WV But reading “Laudato Si’” simply as a case neither the dynamist nor the catastrophist for taking climate change seriously misses framework. the depth of its critique — which extends We might have entered a kind of to the whole “technological paradigm” of stagnationist position, a sustainable our civilization, all the ways (economic and decadence, in which the issues Pope Francis cultural) that we live now. LGHQWL¿HVSHUFRODWHZLWKRXWUHDFKLQJD 7KLVLVDGRFXPHQWDOLJQHGZLWKWKHVFLHQWL¿F world-altering boil. consensus on climate that excoriates the modern In that case, the deep critique our civilization VFLHQWL¿FPLQGVHWDVLQHIIHFWD\HDU deserves will have to be advanced without the mistake. It’s a document calling for global threat of imminent destruction. The arguments action, even a “new world political authority,” in “Laudato Si’” will still resonate, but they will that’s drenched in frank contempt for the have to be structured around a different peril: existing global leadership class. It’s a document Not a fear that the particular evils of our age that urges a rapid move away from fossil fuels can’t last, but the fear that actually, they can. while explicitly criticizing the leading avenue Ŷ for doing so — a cap-and-trade regime — as Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as too “quick and easy,” too compromised by an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. Previously, greed and self-interest, to “allow for the radical he was a senior editor at the Atlantic and a change which present circumstances require.” blogger for theatlantic.com. YOUR VIEWS Rural Oregon should seriously consider secession Rural Oregonians in general and Eastern Oregonians in particular are growing increasingly dismayed by the manner in which Oregon’s legislature and Oregon’s urban dwellers have marginalized their values, demonized their lifestyle, villainized their resource-based livelihoods, and have FODVVL¿HGWKHPDVVHFRQGFODVVFLWL]HQVDW best. All the while they cover Oregon’s most fertile and well-watered farm ground with urban sprawl, gangs, illegal aliens, homeless camps, welfare tramps, and touchy-feely politics that add little or no value to rural lifestyles. Meanwhile Oregon’s rural residents carve out a resource-based living on marginal farm ground and the leftovers of Oregon’s economic growth, infrastructure and technological innovation. The Portland metro area is home to 47 percent of Oregon’s voters and covers a mere 3776.41 square miles of Oregon’s 98,466 square miles — that’s less than 4 percent of its land mass, 3.83 percent to be exact. Five of Oregon’s 36 counties now control 100 percent of Oregon’s legislative activity. None are rural. None are east of the Cascades. None are outside the Willamette valley. It would appear to any rural resident or outside observer that most of Oregon’s urbanites view Oregon’s rural residents as nothing more than third world inhabitants occupying their weekend and vacation playgrounds in what they advertise to the world as Oregon’s unique diversity. The political diversity in this state is becoming unpalatable. Since 1988 Oregon’s urban dwellers have elected a group of individuals that represent nothing short of an aristocracy of political power. They have switched their role in democracy from servant to lord. These people have successfully disenfranchised and subjugated the people occupying everything not Portland or the Willamette Valley. They have enacted laws with little or no debate and no amendments. They have stated they ZLOO¿[DGPLWWHGO\ÀDZHGODZVDIWHUWKH\ are enacted; this is backwards legislative procedure designed to exclude and silence opposition, oftentimes with out-of-state money from East Coast power brokers. Time for a change. Time to organize. Time to secede or succumb. Thirty-one counties need to put an initiative on their ballot that states: “Should (my) county secede from the state of Oregon and seek a more perfect union elsewhere?” Imagine for a moment Idaho’s western ERUGHUVWUHWFKLQJWRWKH3DFL¿FDQGWKH state of Oregon shrinking to less than 4,000 square miles of land-locked, river view property. Grant Darrow Elgin Export-Import Bank must go The reauthorizing of the Export-Import Bank, established in 1934, will sunset on June 30. Originally the Ex-Im Bank was sold as a way to help American exporters. Instead it has become the vehicle for cronyism and corruption. Supporters of the Ex-Im Bank claim it is vital for exports, helps small businesses, and supports tens of thousand jobs. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. Here are some facts which supporters of the bank seem to ignore: 1. Just three companies (Boeing, General Electric, and Caterpillar) received 87 percent of loan guarantees from the ([,P%DQNLQ¿VFDO\HDU 7KH([,P%DQNSURYLGHVH[SRUWLQJ ¿QDQFLQJIRUOHVVWKDQRQHRXWRIHYHU\ 11,000 American small businesses. 3. The vast majority of exporters, 98 percent, do not receive assistance from the bank. ([SRUW¿QDQFLQJGRHVQ¶WFUHDWHQHZ jobs, it merely redistributes job across America. 5. There are 31 corruption and fraud investigations into the Ex-Im Bank. 7KHWRSEHQH¿FLDULHVRIWKH([,P Bank also have massive backlogs of orders, meaning jobs would not be lost. ([,PVXEVLGLHVEHQH¿W&KLQD&XED and Russia. State-owned foreign airlines KDYHUHFHLYHGELOOLRQLQ¿QDQFLQJVLQFH 8. The companies advocating for reauthorizing of the Ex-Im Bank have admitted they do not actually need it. Eliminating the Ex-Im bank would OHYHOWKHSOD\LQJ¿HOGDQGDOORZDOO86 companies to compete on their own merits rather than being politically connected to the bank. Representative Greg Walden should stand up for the little guy and end corporate welfare by voting against any reauthorizing of the Export-Import Bank! LETTERS POLICY Donald Crawford Klamath Falls The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspa- per reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual ser- vices and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.
