VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, January 15, 2022
East Oregonian
A5
BETTE
HUSTED
FROM HERE TO ANY WHERE
Let’s
gather
together
virtually
S
o — winter. Snow and ice, roads
drifted over, schools struggling
to open. And now a mind-bog-
gling spike in COVID-19 cases as
the latest variant of a mutating virus
arrives. With illness closing one of our
local schools, I feel a special sympa-
thy for teachers, who must feel as if
they’re doing gymnastics on a tight-
rope.
At times like these we need more
than a blazing fire and the January
seed catalogs’ promises of spring. We
need each other.
Luckily, even when we can’t safely
gather, if we have an internet connec-
tion we can connect through virtual
platforms. As Cameron Scott, next
Thursday’s First Draft featured writer,
puts it, “Life is a story, and I see a lot
of people trying to make the most of
their story that they can,”.
Scott is a Wallowa County writer,
whose own stories — told in four
books of poetry and numerous essays
— center on fish, environment, family
and the West. “I live for fishing, teach-
ing, and writing,” he says. “It’s a three-
legged structure. Take away one of
those legs and things get a bit wobbly.”
The teaching — currently, grades
7 through 12 at Wallowa High School
and youth workshops at Summer
Fishtrap — and the writing are going
strong. The wobbly leg is fishing, and
Scott’s insights help us realize this is a
loss that impacts us all.
“On the river, things make sense,”
he writes. We don’t have to be holding
a fly rod to understand what he means.
“In the end, the river is everything,
and everything is the river.”
But as a long-time fly fishing guide,
he began to notice the impacts of
increased fishing on the rivers and on
the fish that had been caught and held
out of the water for photos before they
were released.
“And then one summer a severe
drought hit the rivers where I guided
in Colorado,” Scott states. “The entire
ecosystem of the area was stressed
out. I stepped on a rabid bat, fires
consumed the area, something in me
broke. I couldn’t go back to guiding in
a system that was so heavily impacting
the thing that I loved.”
So he took a year off and then began
guiding on his home waters in Oregon.
“However, this past summer, short
of being bitten by a rabid bat, I saw
drought and heat hammer the Grande
Ronde watershed in a repeat of what
I’d seen and experienced in Colorado,”
according to Scott. “At this point there
is nowhere to run, and so I’m digging
in my heels and making a stand for our
anadromous and local fish populations
and the ecosystems I love.”
His poem “Oregon Country,
Hunger” is part of that stand, remind-
ing us that “The ocean refuses no river
but there are/rivers that never make it
to the sea … Swaths of forest. Entire
mountains / eaten away. Seven billion
hungers./Thirsts.”
Cam is one of the teachers balanc-
ing on the pandemic’s quivering
tightrope — a good teacher, much-
loved in Wallowa County since he
implemented the Fishtrap Story Lab
at Joseph Charter School. Earlier, he
co-taught a creative writing workshop,
Voices 110 Degrees, for at-risk youth
in Tucson.
“I show up, listen, and respond to
each student’s landscape of words and
ideas,” he told High Country News
about his teaching stint in Chiloquin.
“And I try to open my world to them
in ways that I hope will help them see
their world more clearly.”
He’s teaching me, too, sending me
to my search engine for insights about
“deep ecology” and “dark ecology,”
which turned out to mean different
things than I had assumed.
The snow is finally melting, but
there’s a lot of winter left, so I hope
we’ll see each other on Jan. 20 at
7 p.m. Just sign up for the Zoom link
on the First Draft Writers’ Series web
page to hear his voice, see his face
(he’ll be smiling) and meet a commu-
nity of grateful listeners — some from
distant places who would not other-
wise be able to attend. You can just
listen, or share your own story at the
open mic.
Until then, stay warm. And keep
that seed catalog handy.
———
Bette Husted is a writer and a student
of tai chi and the natural world. She
lives in Pendleton.
Facing a future that will impact us all
MORE INFORMATION
JEFF
BLACKWOOD
UNDERSTANDING OUR
CHANGING CLIMATE
T
he Oregon Climate Change
Research Institute has published
its “Fifth Oregon Climate Assess-
ment.” OCCRI is a consortium of univer-
sities, researchers and professionals at
Oregon State University.
Every few years, they publish an
assessment on climate change to help our
communities, agencies, businesses and
citizens better understand, prepare and
adapt to our changing climate. The report
is summarized statewide but built on a
county-by-county approach. A section on
Umatilla County describes predictions for
the 2020s and 2050. These findings and
trends are common for our region and can
help us better prepare for our future.
For our region, the outlook in general is
for warmer, droughty summers, and less
predictable rainfall in winters. Although
other factors, such as wind events, blow-
ing dust and loss of wetlands will be
factors, they are predicted to not see the
dramatic changes of summer droughts
and heavy winter rain events.
Summer droughts and heat waves are
expected to increase in frequency and
intensity. We are experiencing earlier
spring snow melt and runoff, leading to
earlier wildfire seasons and reduced late
summer water availability.
The report states, “Wildfire risk, as
expressed through the frequency of very
high fire danger days, is projected to
increase under future climate change. In
Umatilla County, the frequency of very
high fire danger days per year is projected
to increase on average by about 40% (with
a range of minus 14 to +101%) by the
2050s under the higher emissions scenario
compared to the historical baseline.
“Under future climate change, the risk
of wildfire smoke exposure is projected to
increase in Umatilla County. The number
of ‘smoke wave’ days — days with high
The OCCRI report is an important tool to help us and our communities prepare and adapt
to a changing climate. Similar reports are completed for Grant, Baker, and Wallowa counties.
The report is available by contacting Oregon Climate Change Research Institute, College of
Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, 104 CEOAS Admin Building, Oregon State Univer-
sity, Corvallis, OR 97331.
The report is also available to download from this website:
https://blogs.oregonstate.edu/occri/oregon-climate-assessments/.
concentrations of wildfire-specific partic-
ulate matter — is projected to increase by
141% and the intensity of ‘smoke waves’
is projected to increase by 82% by 2046–
2051 under a medium emissions scenario
compared with 2004–2009.”
Warming summer temperatures will
challenge agriculture and increase public
health issues, including heat related
illness and respiratory issues caused by
poor air quality from wildfire smoke.
Although the amount of winter rains
may be normal or slightly more, the
timing will be less predictable. The inten-
sity of extreme precipitation events is
expected to increase in the future as the
atmosphere warms and can hold more
water vapor. Low to mid elevations, a
zone where snow comes and goes, will be
more prone to rain-on-snow events that
pose high flood risks.
The report also states, “Warm-
ing temperatures, altered precipitation
patterns and increasing atmospheric
carbon dioxide levels increase the risk for
invasive species, insect and plant pests for
forest and rangeland vegetation and crop-
ping systems.”
So, as our climate continues to change,
how can we best prepare, adapt, and miti-
gate the expected risks? With the recent
passage of the national infrastructure bill,
there may be opportunities to assure our
roads, culverts, and bridges are designed
to withstand intense flooding. In addition,
there may be ways to improve community
resilience to high water events.
We have opportunities to plant more
shade trees as a response to future heat
waves, especially in underserved commu-
nities. Along with this, we should expect
to deal with more heat wave events and
find ways to provide cooling shelters for
people exposed to the elements or unable
to afford or have air conditioning. For
those of us who rely on water to irrigate
crops and fields, we will need to find more
efficient ways of conserving water, moni-
tor our ground water supplies closely, and
in some cases, convert to more drought
resistant crops.
While many climate change problems
are being addressed at the national and
state level, we all share in the respon-
sibility of doing what we can to reduce
our personal impacts. Monitoring and
reducing our food waste, purchasing
sustainable products, including those with
recyclable packaging, along with travel-
ing less and reusing more are just some
of the options we can consider as individ-
uals. Xeriscaping our yards and taking
advantage of incentives for residential
solar installations also will help. Voting
for candidates willing to take action to
reduce the effects of a changing climate,
especially at the local level, is a powerful
tool as well.
There always are opportunities to
share ideas and collaborate with agencies,
tribes and communities to pool expertise
and resources. The more we know and the
more we all share, the better prepared we
will be to face the future that will impact
us all.
———
Jeff Blackwood retired from a career
with the U.S. Forest Service and is a member
of the Eastern Oregon Climate Change
Coalition.
Dairy’s latest violation underscores danger of factory farms
MACKENZIE
AIME
OTHER VIEWS
M
ega-dairies and the natural gas
industry have lobbied hard to
convince Oregon’s lawmak-
ers that manure digesters lessen factory
farms’ environmental impacts, but as
environmental violations pile up that argu-
ment disintegrates.
Last year, Oregon’s Department of
Environmental Quality fined two of the
state’s mega-dairies (including its larg-
est) for air quality violations that resulted
from digesters, which capture mega-dairy
methane to produce so-called biogas that
can be sold to utilities for a profit. Both
digester projects received millions of
dollars in public funding despite posing
myriad threats to Oregon’s communities
and threatening Gov. Kate Brown’s ambi-
tious climate goals.
Chemically, factory farm biogas is
identical to fracked gas. Its main compo-
nent is methane, a powerful greenhouse
gas that must be drastically reduced to
slow the worst effects of climate change.
Brown’s plans for Oregon’s emissions
reductions are among the most ambitious
in the U.S., setting a goal of an 80 percent
reduction by 2030 that far eclipses Biden’s
goals for the country. But, instead of
reducing the ag sector’s methane emis-
sions, a raft of tax credits and incentives
is making it easier than ever for Oregon
mega-dairies to produce more methane
and sell it for a profit.
Threemile Canyon Farms and Farm
Power Misty Meadow both face fines
upwards of $18,000 for air quality viola-
tions at their dairy manure digesters, but
the fines are a pittance compared with
the millions of dollars in public funding
allocated to these projects from Oregon’s
taxpayers.
In fact, Threemile Canyon Farms’
former general manager called factory
farm gas “the most valuable product that
we have out there” — more valuable even
than the milk it produces for dairy giant
Tillamook. Threemile and Farm Power
received more than $5 million and nearly
$1.5 million to subsidize their factory farm
gas, respectively.
Oregon’s Clean Fuels Program along-
side its Renewable Natural Gas Portfolio
allowances incentivize the purchase of
factory farm biogas by natural gas util-
ities, allowing them to greenwash their
pollution of our climate and communities.
Northwest Natural, a household name to
many in Oregon, has scored three lucra-
tive factory farm gas contracts as a result.
And just recently, Shell Oil announced the
creation of its first biomethane facility in
Junction City, just outside of Eugene.
Unless our leaders act fast, factory farm
biogas will sit alongside fossil fuels as an
essential ingredient in our current market-
based, climate-wrecking cocktail.
If Brown hopes to meet her ambi-
tious emissions reductions targets, she
and our legislators cannot allow factory
farm gas or mega-dairies to grow. In her
last term, Brown must cement her legacy
as a climate champion. She can start by
enacting a moratorium on mega-dairies,
cutting off the raw materials necessary
for factory farm biogas. She can slash the
incentives and tax credits that have made
methane profitable and redirect those
funds to real climate solutions, including
electrification and community-sourced
energy plans. Oregon can meet its climate
goals, but not with factory farm gas and
polluting digesters.
———
Mackenzie Aime is the Oregon Orga-
nizer with Food & Water Watch. She lives
in Eugene and works to protect Oregon’s
communities and environment from the
harmful impacts of mega-dairies.