A4
East Oregonian
Tuesday, June 4, 2019
CHRISTOPHER RUSH
Publisher
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
ANDREW CUTLER
Editor
WYATT HAUPT JR.
News Editor
JADE McDOWELL
Hermiston Editor
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Legislature needs to go back to the drawing board on HB 2020
N
o matter what its support-
ers assert, Oregon House Bill
2020 isn’t ready for primetime.
HB 2020 is the hopelessly compli-
cated climate change legislation that
has evolved into the key bill for Dem-
ocrats in the 2019 session. The bill
is grounded in good intentions. The
global climate is changing, and humans
are the cause. Just about everyone can
agree we should — and must — do
something to improve the environment
and to battle climate change. How to
do that, though, is where it gets com-
plicated and HB 2020 is exhibit A in
just how good intentions can quickly
become convoluted and dense.
The legislation will create a man-
datory, statewide greenhouse gas
emission reduction plan. The emis-
sion reduction plan targets companies
that discharge more than 25,000 met-
ric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents
each year. Carbon dioxide equivalents
are a collection used to measure how
much green house gas is entering the
atmosphere.
Supporters of the bill assert it will
help the environment and curb cli-
Courtesy photo
House Bill 2020 is the expansive and complex legislation that would put Oregon at the fore-
front of U.S. efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change.
mate change. Opponents believe the
plan will hike gas prices, hurt the econ-
omy and drive major firms away from
the state. Who is correct is a matter of
opinion and party affiliation.
While nearly byzantine in its form,
HB 2020 is also not a piece of legisla-
tion that will get the necessary review
and debate it needs. Democrats hold a
super majority at the Legislature, which
means they can pretty much push
through whatever legislation they want
unmolested.
Also troubling is the fact that Dem-
ocratic lawmakers have signaled time
and again they are not going to listen
to input from their Republican breth-
ren on the bill. They are going to jam it
through regardless.
Democracy works when there
is debate, discussion and compro-
mise. When one party takes power
— whether it is Republican or Demo-
crat — and operates more like a faction
than a group of lawmakers determined
to do the people’s business, Democracy
loses.
A few years ago, lawmakers joined
together, created and passed a massive
transportation bill. Legislators — on
both sides of the aisle — spent more
than a year traveling the state, holding
public meetings to gather input on the
legislation. Lawmakers used a method-
ical process to fine tune the transporta-
tion legislation.
Now, they should do the same with
House Bill 2020. Shoving through the
legislation may salve the consciousness
of would-be world savers but it won’t
help Democracy and it won’t help the
state.
HB 2020 isn’t ready for primetime.
Not yet.
OTHER VIEWS
When trolls and crybullies rule the earth
O
YOUR VIEWS
B2H will be a burden, not a
boon, to Eastern Oregon
Mitch Colburn, an Idaho Power
spokesman for the controversial Board-
man to Hemingway transmission line,
insists that demands for electricity will
increase and a shortfall will exist by 2025,
but my research shows that the market is
not growing. Idaho power’s billed sales
(in all categories of customers) for the last
10 years have been essentially flat, if not
declining. That’s supported by reports
from the U.S. government and Idaho
Power’s own data.
Changes in electric utilities are occur-
ring so rapidly that most industry analysts
propose “strategic positioning” as the best
investment to make at this time. However,
the B2H is a highly centralized, $1.2 bil-
lion mega-project that guarantees an $80
million dollar profit to Idaho Power and
their partners’ shareholders, but does not
serve the ratepayers or the public. The
five Eastern Oregon counties that would
be crossed by the line will see irrepara-
ble environmental and cultural damages
and increasing grid defections, leaving
only the poorest of communities to pay
the bills. Idaho Powers’ 12-year-old B2H
plans are based on an old-school approach
that has consistently ignored dramatic
changes in power sources, delivery and
storage.
For about a century, affordable elec-
trification has been based on economies
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of
the East Oregonian editorial board. Other
columns, letters and cartoons on this page
express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
of scale, with large generating plants pro-
ducing hundreds or thousands of mega-
watts of power, sent to distant users
through a vast transmission and distribu-
tion grid. Today, utility industry develop-
ments are replacing that simple model.
At the top of the list is the availability
of low-cost natural gas and solar power.
Generators based on these resources can
be built much closer to customers. We are
now in the early stages of an expansion of
distributed generation, which is already
lessening the need for costly and wasteful
long-distance transmission.
The insecurity of a centralized trans-
mission system is not in our best inter-
est. If one large transmission line goes
down, perhaps due to terrorism or forest
fire, entire cities are blacked out and vul-
nerable. With distributed generation, most
areas would still have power.
Ongoing price declines and techno-
logical advances in energy generation
and distribution show the proposed B2H
transmission line will be obsolete from
the onset. Considering decreasing con-
sumer demands and the rapid and dra-
matic changes in the industry, Idaho
Power’s self-serving efforts to support
need for the B2H are neither credible nor
realistic.
Contact StopB2H.org for more
information.
JoAnn Marlette, member,
Stop B2H Coalition
Baker City
ver the past several years, teenage sui-
others’ pain, so when they hurt you, they don’t
cide rates have spiked horrifically.
care.
Depression rates are surging, and Amer-
Trolling is a very effective way to gener-
ate attention in a competitive, volatile atten-
ica’s mental health overall is deteriorating.
tion economy. It’s a way to feel righteous and
What’s going on?
important, especially if you claim to be trolling
My answer starts with technology but is
really about the sort of consciousness online life on behalf of some marginalized group.
Another prominent personality type in this
induces.
economy is the crybully. This is the person who
When communication styles change, so do
takes his or her own pain and victimization and
people. In 1982, scholar Walter Ong described
uses it to make sure every conversation revolves
the way, centuries ago, a shift from an oral to a
around himself or herself. “This is the age of the
printed culture transformed human conscious-
ness. Once, storytelling was a shared experi-
Cry-Bully, a hideous hybrid of victim and victor,
ence, with emphasis on proverb, parable and
weeper and walloper,” Julie Burchill wrote in
myth. With the onset of the printing press it
The Spectator a few years ago.
become a more private experience, the
The crybully starts with a genu-
ine trauma. The terrible thing that
content of that storytelling more realistic
happened naturally makes the cry-
and linear.
bully feel unsafe, self-protective
As L.M. Sacasas argues in the latest
and self-conscious to the point of
issue of The New Atlantis, the shift from
self-absorption. The trauma makes
printed to electronic communication is
that person intensely concerned
similarly consequential. I would say the
about self-image.
big difference is this: Attention and affec-
tion have gone from being private bonds
The problem comes from the
D aviD
to being publicly traded goods.
subsequent need to control any sit-
B rooks
uation, the failure to see the big
That is, up until recently most of the
COMMENT
picture, the tendency to lash out in
attention a person received came from
fear and anger as a way to fixate
family and friends and was pretty stable.
attention on oneself and obliterate others. Cry-
But now most of the attention a person receives
bullying is at the heart of many of our campus
can come from far and wide and is tremen-
dously volatile.
de-platforming and censorship outrages.
Sometimes your online post can go viral and
Trolling, crybullying and other atten-
tion-grabbing tactics emerge out of a feeling of
get massively admired or ridiculed, while other
weakness and create a climate that causes more
times your post can leave you alone and com-
pletely ignored. Communication itself, once
pain, in which it is not safe to lead with vulner-
ability, not safe to test out ideas or do the things
mostly collaborative, is now often competitive,
that create genuine companionship.
with bids for affection and attention. It is also
The internet has become a place where peo-
more manipulative — gestures designed to gen-
ple communicate out of their competitive ego:
erate a response.
I’m more fabulous than you (a lot of Instagram).
People ensconced in social media are more
You’re dumber than me (much of Twitter). It’s
likely to be on perpetual alert: How are my rat-
ings this moment? They are also more likely to
not a place where people share from their hearts
and souls.
feel that the amount of attention they are receiv-
ing is inadequate.
Of course, people enmeshed in such a cli-
As David Foster Wallace put it in that famous mate are more likely to feel depressed, to suf-
fer from mental health problems. Of course,
Kenyon commencement address, if you orient
they are more likely to see human relation-
your life around money, you will never feel you
ship through the abuser/victim frame and to be
have enough. Similarly, if you orient your life
acutely sensitive to any power imbalance. Imag-
around attention, you will always feel slighted.
ine you’re 17 and people you barely know are
You will always feel emotionally unsafe.
saying nice or nasty things about your unformed
New social types emerge in such a commu-
nications regime. The most prominent new type self. It creates existential anxiety and hence
is the troll, and in fact, Americans have elected a fanaticism.
troll as the commander in chief.
Two words loom large in this moment:
Trolls bid for attention by trying to make oth- trauma and equity. Trauma is living with the
ers feel bad. Studies of people who troll find
aftershocks of a bad event — or, more import-
ant, it is having no place to go where the after-
that they score high on measures of psychopa-
thy, sadism and narcissism. Online media hasn’t shocks can be healed because the public conver-
sation is unsafe. Equity is the dream of a world
made them vicious; they’re just vicious. Online
in which all are given equal attention and dig-
has given them a platform to use viciousness to
nity. The dream is still out there, but it’s reced-
full effect.
ing with every vicious attack done in its name.
Trolls also score high on cognitive empathy.
———
Intellectually, they understand other people’s
David Brooks is a columnist for the New
emotions and how to make them suffer. But they
York Times.
score low on affective empathy. They don’t feel
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