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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (June 18, 2016)
VIEWPOINTS Saturday, June 18, 2016 Quick takes — Jovanna Centre Feds may cut airport subsidy More unqualiied pen pushers making decisions without considering the people who use the lights! — Pat Meuret I’ve really enjoyed Seaport for business travel but Amtrak would be a great alterna- tive. — Micah Engum Just maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. Cut some of that federal umbilical cord. If a private company can’t make it work, then the government sure won’t be able to either. Figure out another way. — Bryan N Becky Miltenberger ODOT asks for oil train halt Why are we still using wooden ties when almost everywhere else uses concrete or steel? — Michael Lovejoy The train was headed to Vancouver and Tacoma. According to the risk assessment experts, the maximum foreseeable loss would be $6 billion in Vancouver. — Don Charles Steinke One of the great lessons of the Twitter age is that much can be summed up in just a few words. Here are some of this week’s takes. Tweet yours @Tim_Trainor or email editor@eastoregonian. com, and keep them to 140 characters. Page 5A Blame the market, not environmental regulation Memories of elementaries I remember living across the street and having fun at Washington: ield day on the red rock track, climbing the tree, the unsafe playground equipment, roller skating in the gym, and Iris, the playground aide and neighbor. East Oregonian By GEORGE WUERTHNER Writers on the Range C ritics of public lands like to say that timber jobs declined and mills closed over the last 20 years because environmental protections such as the Endangered Species Act and other laws made the cost of logging skyrocket. This complaint is repeated so often it is usually stated as unqualiied truth. If you believe the rhetoric, the way federal lands are managed has been the problem. If only there were more private owners of the land, local economies would prosper, and there would be stable, long- term stewardship. If only that were true. But if you compare the mostly private wood-products industry in the state of Maine to the West’s experiences on public land, you ind that environmental regulations had little to do with the demise of logging. Ninety percent of Maine is forested, and more than 93 percent of the state’s land is privately owned, mostly by large timber companies that sell trees to the wood-products industry. If private lands lead to prosperity and healthy landscapes, Maine should be the poster child for the country. And unlike the West, Maine, imposes minimal regulations on private landowners. There are also almost no listed endangered species in Maine to harry the timber industry. Yet today, the forest-products industry in Maine is a shadow of its former self. In 1980, there were 25 pulp and paper mills in the state. Today, two-thirds of those mills are gone. Since 1990, the state has lost 13,000 of its approximately 17,000 paper-industry jobs, including more than 2,300 in the past ive years. The decline continues. Associated wood products companies in Maine have also seen a decline — everything from wood furniture, wood looring and clothespin producers have closed up shop. The decline in both employment and production in Maine was caused by the same forces that drastically cut forest industry jobs in the West: foreign competition, which brought in cheaper wood products, technological advances and new automation that allowed computers instead of people to run machinery. High energy prices and labor costs also played a role as plastic and steel moved in to replace wood. Think about the brightly colored plastic Adirondack chairs for sale at Home Depot now replacing the wooden chairs on which they are modeled. Instead of wood rafters, steel-beam has replaced two-by-fours in some construction, and so forth. The decline in newspapers and print materials has also dramatically altered demand for pulp production. All of these factors are affecting the West’s wood industry as much as they affect Maine. These days, most of the new sawmills and pulp mills built in the United States are in the South. Trees grow faster there, and unlike the western United States, they can reach harvestable age in a decade or two. To the timber industry, the longer you have to wait to cut trees, the higher the risk. Your trees might die in a forest ire, a beetle outbreak or some other natural event. So locating your mills in places where you can grow a tree to merchantable size quickly is a smart business practice. Furthermore, most of the Southern timberlands are lat and accessible year- round. In the steep mountains of the West, road construction costs are far greater, and snow limits seasonal access. So that’s the picture: The decline of the Western wood products industry — like that in Maine — occurred because of economic realities that favor other regions of the globe. Blaming environmentalists, endangered species protection, or environmental regulations is easy. But blame fails to explain a changing world, or help us understand its nuances. Unlike Maine, the West has an alternative. Its abundant public lands — in particular its wilderness areas, national parks and monuments — provides the foundation for another future for the region. While not all the changes that come with the “new” economy are welcome — take sprawl and increased impacts from recreational users — they can be managed if we make intelligent choices. The West boasts iconic wildlands like Grand Canyon and Yellowstone national parks, the Owyhee Canyonlands and the Gila Wilderness. In the end, federal ownership and protection of wildlands and open spaces is far superior to the Maine model of private ownership and maximized proits. Our model gives us the chance to manage forests sensibly, and it offers at least some potential for a more sustainable future for Western communities. ■ George Wuerthner is a contributor to Writers on the Range, an opinion service of High Country News. He lives in Bend and is an ecologist who has published 38 books about Western environmental issues. The decline of the Western wood products industry occurred because of economic realities. Brexit would be a colossal blunder Bridging Oregon’s B as an overarching European structure, ARI, Italy — The “Contrary to the cartoon short on democracy and long on prospect that Britain caricature of the EU we read bureaucracy. about in the national press,” might next week But, as Italy’s postwar development he wrote, the union “has commit an act of national demonstrates, its cemented peace folly by voting to leave the achievements far in Europe. It European Union has politicians outweigh its problems, allows younger throughout Europe alarmed. which Britain could generations to Integration has been the play a leading role in live and work Continent’s leitmotif for more Roger addressing. anywhere in than six decades. Fracture Cohen “Politics is about Europe in would suddenly be underway. Comment seizing the moment, a way my And what would be left? interpreting what generation “If a British withdrawal history has given you could only dream were seen by Germany as opening the the responsibility to about. It has vastly way to govern Europe as a Germanic do,” Emiliano told simpliied travel federation, the European Union will me. “Thanks to the across the Continent. fall apart,” Michele Emiliano, the Americans who landed president of the southern Puglia region, It has brought Eastern on Sicilian beaches, Europe into the family told me in an interview. “Europe can I have the freedom only function as a union of equal states. of free, democratic to speak and you the nations after decades Under German dominion, it would freedom to write. I of Soviet control. It has contain the genes of its dissolution.” never forget this. If broken up powerful Germany has already become what monopolies and cartels the postwar strategic architecture of — Michele Emiliano, politics is not about in a way national Europe was designed to prevent: the Presdent, Italy’s Puglia respecting the past to secure the future, governments acting Continent’s most powerful nation. region it is merely a mirror alone could not. It has But Britain, through the size of its you gaze in, a form of economy, has played an offsetting role. forced member states narcissism.” to clean up the environment.” Absent Britain, Germany would loom Such narcissism is rampant in He continued: “We would be larger still, a source of alarm to the Britain and America these days. For willfully removing ourselves from a economically weaker Mediterranean Britain to succumb to its delusions and single market of 500 million people states. without the faintest idea whether, or on leave the union would be a colossal Postwar Italy was fragile, torn blunder of historic proportions. what terms, we would be allowed to between the West and communism, When in Italy, I often think of continue trading with 27 EU states who between “scaling the Alps” and would want to punish us. Why on earth my late uncle, Bert Cohen, who, as succumbing to the Maia-suffused an oficer of the 6th South African would we take such a monumental inertia of the south, or mezzogiorno. Armored Division, 19th Field risk?” European Union membership was the Ambulance, fought the entire Italian The answer is that this huge gamble country’s anchor and magnet, securing campaign, moving up the peninsula would be taken for the chimera of it in the free and democratic Western from south to north. After the Allied family, luring it toward prosperity. Now restored “sovereignty.” It would relect victory, he visited Berchtesgaden in petulant nationalism, base bigotry and that role is played most conspicuously the Bavarian Alps, on September 2, for newer members of the union. But its laughable Little England pretensions. 1945, and went up to Hitler’s mountain Fletcher expressed the reality behind importance persists. retreat, the Eagle’s Nest. He etched his Emiliano, a former maia-combating all this with laconic bluntness: “As a single country we would have minimal name on the Fuhrer’s table. public prosecutor, heads a region that What sweet retribution to have inluence on world affairs. is its own tribute to the union’s quiet “Cohen” inscribed there! Does anyone seriously think miracles. Puglia, long a languishing Later, he made his life in Britain — the prospect of British sanctions part of the chronically underdeveloped the home of a freedom that, to him, was would alarm Vladimir Putin, or have south, is now an area of fast-growing not insular but European and universal. industry and tourism, the poster child of persuaded Iran to curtail its nuclear To vote out would also betray that program?” the generally depressed mezzogiorno. The European Union has signiicant inscription and all it stands for. Like other outlying regions of the EU, ■ failings, many of them precipitated it has been slowly tugged through Roger Cohen joined The New by the sudden end of the Cold War, stability toward the living standards of York Times in 1990. He was a foreign the reach to embrace states formerly the European core. correspondent for more than a decade In a Facebook post, Martin Fletcher, enslaved in Moscow’s imperium, before becoming acting foreign editor and the lawed attempt to contain a a former foreign editor of The Times on Sept. 11, 2001, and foreign editor six united Germany by integrating it into a of London, put these European Union common currency called the euro. It is, months later. achievements well. “Europe can only function as a union of equal states. Under German dominion, it would contain the genes of its dissolution.” rural/urban gap The (Albany) Democrat-Herald M aybe you’ve heard of that song “How ‘Ya Going to Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree)?” The idea behind the song, a big hit during World War I, was that once our soldiers saw the bright lights of the city, they’d be reluctant to return to the farms from whence they came. Lorrie Andrews might argue that the song has it backward. Andrews is the superintendent of the Burnt River School District, in Unity, in Eastern Oregon. Unity has a population of 71, according to the 2010 Census. Burnt River School, where Andrews also serves as principal and teaches, is a public charter school with 34 students this past school year. Burnt River School is also the source of a terriic idea that might end up doing more to heal the gap between rural and urban Oregon than anything coming out of Salem: Recently, schools in Portland sent out an invitation to high school students there: Come to Burnt River for a semester and study agriculture and science. Dozens of Portland students and their families emailed back. Eight of them will be at Burnt River when the new school year begins. We read about the program in a recent story in the Capital Press by Eric Mortenson. Since I’ve written in the past about the rural-urban gap in Oregon, I was intrigued enough to speak with Andrews last week about the program. Andrews said the situation at Burnt River is similar to what’s been happening at smaller schools around the state: The school has been facing declining enrollment for the last few years. But Burnt River teachers and administrators knew they had something of value to offer students, and had to look no further than the experiences of the exchange students who came to the school from other countries (often from large urban areas). Those exchange students have found the experience life-changing: “They come as strangers and they leave as family,” Andrews said. “It’s a tough time when they have to say goodbye.” Andrews was cautiously optimistic when the time came to extend the invitation to Portland students: Not only did she think there might be some appeal in studying agriculture and science in a rural setting, but she thought some families might prefer the smaller school setting Burnt River offers. The irst batch of students will be all girls (the idea is to alternate between girls and boys each semester). They’ll stay with ranching families, and so will get irsthand experience at working with animals. The additional students will beneit the school district’s budget: The State School Fund pays districts $7,100 per student, and that money will low to Burnt River. But that’s a nice added bonus for a program that offers such promise to build bridges, one person and one family at a time, between rural and urban Oregon. And Andrews expects that the experience will be valuable to Burnt River students and staff members as well.
