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Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Saturday, September 2, 2017 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor MARISSA WILLIAMS Regional Advertising Director MARCY ROSENBERG Circulation Manager JANNA HEIMGARTNER Business Office Manager MIKE JENSEN Production Manager EO MEDIA GROUP East Oregonian • The Daily Astorian • Capital Press • Hermiston Herald Blue Mountain Eagle • Wallowa County Chieftain • Chinook Observer • Coast River Business Journal Oregon Coast Today • Coast Weekend • Seaside Signal • Cannon Beach Gazette Eastern Oregon Real Estate Guide • Eastern Oregon Marketplace • Coast Marketplace OnlyAg.com • FarmSeller.com • Seaside-Sun.com • NorthwestOpinions.com • DiscoverOurCoast.com OUR VIEW How to raise an adult Children across Eastern Oregon will learn is by doing their work returned to school this week — that themselves. includes tiny toddlers just learning It may seem like your child is far their ABCs to high school seniors from graduating high school and ready to tear into trigonometry. going out into the world, but it will That teary-eyed walk to the bus happen in a blink of an eye. We had stop is both a heartbreaking and a few of our own tips for things your prideful time for parents, marking children should be able to do by the another moment as their children time they are 18. age and grow. Those children are • Be able to communicate and becoming better, solve interpersonal smarter, stronger problems. Focus on loving human beings, but Looking another at the same time human being your child they are losing in the eye and dearly but letting asking for help, the innocence and reliance on mom on a them solve their collaborating and dad that parents project or working cherish. own problems. out a conflict is Learning to let becoming a lost go can be hard for art. It’s something parents. Some never do. machines will never be able to do Julie Lythcott-Haims wrote “How for us and doesn’t come naturally for to Raise an Adult: Break Free of most people. It takes practice, hurt the Overparenting Trap and Prepare feelings, honesty and persistence. Your Kid for Success,” in 2015, and • Be able to feed themselves. she has plenty of thoughts about Fast food and frozen burritos how parents can help and hamper don’t count. Not everyone develops their children’s personal growth. top-chef culinary talents, but being Lythcott-Haims is a former dean able to buy groceries, prepare food of freshmen and undergraduate and know what you’re putting advising Stanford, who has seen her in your body is fundamental to a share of overprotective, helicopter healthy life. parents who shelter their children • Be in charge of their own from failure and difficulty. The title balanced budget, and have the of her book is a clue that, in her flexibility and responsibility mind, that overprotection can be of making their own financial debilitating for many children. decisions. She argues while that over-active, Making a living isn’t easy and over-engaged, over-motivating budgetary pitfalls are everywhere, parents can have short-term leading to problems both personal payoffs in their children’s success, and societal. Flexing the financial it eventually leave those same muscle early and getting some trial youngsters inexperienced with and error out of the way before dealing with their own problems. leaving the house will soften stress And in the long run, that makes down the line for them, and you. them less them less likely to succeed • Have a purpose beyond the in a challenging world where help is weekend. not always offered. Most importantly, make In the book, Lythcott-Haimes sure your blossoming adult is offers her most critical parenting developing the character and tips: vision to think outside themselves • Stop staying “we.” In and further than Friday night. conversation about your children, Teaching kindness and compassion don’t refer to their work or doesn’t end after kindergarten, and achievements by using “we.” “We” thoughtfulness and leadership don’t are not on the soccer team, “we’re” begin in college. not doing the science project, and It can be hard to give our children “we’re” not applying to college. that space, to watch them make • Stop arguing with the adults mistakes we’re sure we could have in your children’s lives. Kids need helped solve. But they’ll learn from to learn to advocate for themselves each one, and grow up to be more with their teachers, coaches or other reliant, successful adults. school staff. They should have these This school year, focus on loving conversations themselves. your child dearly but letting them • Stop doing your children’s solve their own problems. They’ll homework. The only way kids thank you for it later. OTHER VIEWS Hurricanes, climate and the capitalist offset T 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. exans will find few consolations On a global level, the University of in the wake of a hurricane as Colorado’s Roger Pielke Jr. notes that terrifying as Harvey. But here, disaster losses as a percentage of the at least, is one: A biblical storm has world’s GDP, at just 0.3 percent, have hit them, and the death toll — 38 as of remained constant since 1990. That’s this writing — is mercifully low, given despite the dollar cost of disasters its intensity. having nearly doubled over the same This is not how it plays out in much time — at just about the same rate of the world. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch as the growth in the global economy. Bret ripped through Central America and Stephens (Pielke is yet another victim of the killed anywhere between 11,000 and climate lobby’s hyperactive smear Comment 19,000 people, mostly in Honduras machine, but that doesn’t make his and Nicaragua. Nearly a decade later data any less valid.) Cyclone Nargis slammed into Myanmar, and a Climate activists often claim that staggering 138,000 people perished. unchecked economic growth and the Nature’s furies — hurricanes, earthquakes, things that go with are principal causes of landslides, droughts, infectious diseases, environmental destruction. In reality, growth you name it — may strike is the great offset. It’s a unpredictably. But their effects big part of the reason why, are not distributed at random. despite our warming planet, Rich countries tend to mortality rates from storms experience, and measure, have declined from .11 per the costs of such disasters 100,000 in the 1900s to .04 primarily in terms of money. per 100,000 in the 2010s, Poor countries experience according to data compiled them primarily in terms of by Hannah Ritchie and Max lives. Between 1940 and 2016, Roser. Death rates from other a total of 3,348 people died in natural disasters such as floods the United States on account and droughts have fallen of hurricanes, according by even more staggering to government data, for an percentages over the last average of 43 victims a year. That’s a tragedy, century. but compare it to the nearly 140,000 lives lost That’s because economic growth isn’t when a cyclone hit Bangladesh in 1991. just a matter of parking lots paving over Why do richer countries fare so much paradise. It also underwrites safety standards, better than poorer ones when it comes funds scientific research, builds spillways to natural disasters? It isn’t just better and wastewater plants, creates “green jobs,” regulation. I grew up in Mexico City, which subsidizes Elon Musk, sets aside prime real adopted stringent building codes following a estate for conservation, and so on. Poverty, devastating earthquake in 1957. That didn’t not wealth, is the enemy of the environment. save the city in the 1985 earthquake, when we Only the rich have the luxury of developing an learned that those codes had been flouted for ethical stance toward their trash. years by lax or corrupt building inspectors, The paradox of our time is that the part and thousands of people were buried under the of the world that has never been safer from rubble of shoddy construction. Regulation is the vagaries of nature seems never to have only as good, or bad, as its enforcement. been more terrified of them. Harvey truly is A better answer lies in the combination an astonishing storm, the likes of which few of government responsiveness and civic people can easily remember. spiritedness so splendidly on display this Then again, as meteorologist Philip week in Texas. And then there’s the matter of Klotzbach points out, it’s also only one of four wealth. Category 4 or 5 hurricanes to make landfall Every child knows that houses of brick are in the United States since 1970. By contrast, safer than houses of wood or straw — and more than twice as many such storms made therefore cost more to build. Harvey will landfall between 1922 and 1969. Make of that damage or ruin thousands of homes. But it what you will, but remember that fear is often won’t sweep away entire neighborhoods, as a function of unfamiliarity. Typhoon Haiyan did in the Philippine city of Houston will ultimately recover from Tacloban in 2013. Harvey’s devastation because its people are Harvey will also inflict billions in creative and courageous. They will rebuild economic damage, most crushingly on and, when the next storm comes, as it uninsured homeowners. The numbers are inevitably will, be better prepared for it. The likely to be staggering in absolute terms, but best lesson the world can take from Texas what’s more remarkable is how easily the U.S. is to follow the path of its extraordinary economy can absorb the blow. The storm will economic growth on the way to environmental be a “speed bump” to Houston’s $503 billion resilience. economy, according to Moody’s Analytics’ ■ Adam Kamins, who told The Wall Street Bret Stephens won a Pulitzer Prize for Journal that he expects the storm to derail commentary in 2013. He began working as a growth for about two months. columnist at The New York Times in April. Extraordinary economic growth is the way to environmental resilience. YOUR VIEWS Supporting Trump makes you OK with racism Let’s hear it for the benchwarmers I will venture to say that the bigots among us finally have their man in the White House. His shameful pardon of Joe Arpaio in Arizona should erase any lingering doubts about Trump and his intentions for people of color in this country. His appeasement of white supremacists and his defense of confederate memorials hammer home his main goal, to make America white again. When he questioned the integrity of the Hispanic judge (born in America, by the way) to rule on a suit involving Trump, most of us who’ve had our “Americanism” questioned because of our ethnicity knew exactly how that judge felt. Are you a racist if you voted for Trump? No, but you are certainly okay with the racism Trump flaunts by his words and his actions. This is the saddest chapter in our downward spiral as a country coming apart at the seams An East Oregonian “Tip of the Hat” should go out to Tom Melton and all his years of effort to recognize former outstanding athletes of Pendleton. Many also appreciate his more recent efforts to recognize good Pendleton athletes who were outstanding in other sports besides football. Even some well deserving ladies are being honored now by the group. Although I am not one of these stars, I did go to school and play on teams with the likes of Dick Jones, Steve Bunker and Clarence Cowapoo. I had Don Requa for a math teacher and his son Billy was a good friend of mine before he died. Kenny Milton was one of my early coaches, and I always valued the lessons I learned from him. His son Steve was also a good friend of mine and one of the toughest guys I knew on the ballfield as well as a great coach. I even had the honor of watching the great Bob Lilly play in his early years at PHS. That said, there is one very important semi-athletic group that has been sorely left out of the accolades and honors bestowed David Gracia Hermiston upon past Pendleton athletes. After careful thought and consultation with some of those guys who shared this vital spot with me, I am hereby suggesting the formation of the “PHS Bench Warmers Club.” This important group never receives the attention and recognition it deserves. No team — and none of the athletes inducted into the Linebackers Club Hall of Fame — would have ever made it without them. In fact, I am going to be very bold here and suggest myself to be the very first inductee. I might even go a step further and offer my old bench warming buddy, Larry Sweek, to join me as a double induction for the first go round. Larry and I spent many hours, over a four year period, warming the bench for our high school coach. His general rule was that Larry and I would get to play if our basketball team was either twenty points ahead, or twenty points behind. The other golden rule was that we were allowed to play no more than two minutes in each game — just barely enough time to get the adrenalin under control and begin to calm down enough to play with some confidence. Then it was back to our starting position — First Team Bench Warmer. I know there are many others out there who feel the same, so I will be holding an exploratory meeting for membership at the Rainbow Cafe in the near future I don’t see why we can’t have a nice dinner, good speaker or two, induction ceremonies and have just as much fun as the Linebacker’s Club does each year. We deserve it! David Burns Pendleton LETTERS POLICY 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.