ANDREW CUTLER
Publisher/Editor
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
ERICK PETERSON
Hermiston Editor/Senior Reporter
THURSDAy, MARCH 31, 2022
A4
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Private
enterprise
shines in
climate
efforts
N
ot to be critical of government, but
if you want something done, you’re
usually best off looking to private
enterprise.
It’s not that government can’t do it, it’s just
that government too often gets in the way of
itself — and everyone else.
Take, for example, efforts to slow climate
change. At the state and federal levels,
a hodgepodge of climate programs has
emerged over the years. Most are aimed at
jacking up oil and gas prices.
By doing that, they are supercharging
inflation, which is now 7.9%, the highest it’s
been since 1982.
The federal government has been partic-
ularly inept in its climate efforts. It has
subsidized “green” companies such as Tesla,
which in turn has built factories overseas,
including China, the biggest climate polluter
on the planet. That country produces 30%
of the world’s carbon dioxide and continues
to add to its fleet of 1,110 coal-fired power
generation plants to run all of those Chinese-
built Teslas.
By comparison, India operates the
second-largest number of coal-fired plants,
285.
In the meantime, the federal government
also has discouraged domestic oil and natural
gas production while going to countries such
as Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia looking
for more oil.
In Oregon, the unelected bureaucrats in
the Department of Environment Quality are
doing an end-run around the Legislature with
their “Climate Protection Program.”
In Washington, the Department of Ecol-
ogy is aiming at forcing refineries to reduce
their greenhouse gases by 28% in four years.
That means consumers and businesses —
you — will ultimately be saddled with higher
gasoline and diesel prices.
The carbon footprints of Oregon and
Washington are minuscule compared to those
of China, India and Russia, or even Califor-
nia. What we in the Northwest do to slow
climate change matters, but not very much.
Washington produces about 0.19% of global
carbon emissions, while Oregon produces
about 0.17%. That’s according to each state
and the Our World in Data website.
With that in mind, we were greatly inter-
ested in a new private enterprise effort
that appears to have all of the trappings of
success. Organic Valley, a cooperative of
organic dairy farmers, last month announced
its Carbon Insetting Program as a means of
achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
This program is the essence of simplicity.
Instead setting up some confusing govern-
ment-style effort that requires a battalion
of new employees, Organic Valley will pay
co-op members for reducing their carbon
footprint. More efficient lighting and cool-
ers, installing solar panels, planting trees
and better manure management are among
the activities that will reduce or offset carbon
dioxide and methane production.
The efforts will be certified by a third
party, SustainCERT, to determine the
impacts.
In return, the farmers will receive the
market rate, about $15, for every metric ton of
carbon that is either sequestered or otherwise
prevented from entering the atmosphere.
Others in agriculture are developing
efforts that will similarly reduce their impact
on the climate.
They all have several characteristics in
common. They are simple, meaningful and
effective.
Those are three characteristics generally
missing from government climate efforts.
A suggestion: Maybe the government
should stick to encouraging private enter-
prise to reduce its carbon footprint instead of
pushing programs that will cost consumers,
businesses, farmers and ranchers.
Our confidence is in private enterprise. If
government wants to help, that’s fine. It just
shouldn’t get in the way.
Oregon faces bleak water outlook
RANDY
STAPILUS
OTHER VIEWS
arlier this month Gov. Kate
Brown, at the request of local
officials, declared a drought
emergency for Klamath County when
snowpack in the area fell to 60% of
normal.
That news didn’t make the top head-
lines on the county government’s website
last week, but another water emergency
did: A serious drying of residential wells.
An information sheet from the county
said, “Temperatures have been warmer
than normal; precipitation has been
significantly lower than normal; soil
moisture has been at or near historic
lows as have stream flows. As a result
of these drought conditions, aquifers
that support many domestic wells in the
Klamath Project area have received less
recharge than normal resulting in an
unprecedented number of domestic wells
going dry or producing less water than is
needed.”
Some help is coming.
The state Department of Human
Services is making water deliveries to
owners of dry wells through March, at
the county’s request. How long that will
last is uncertain.
Of course, if you expect a water
supply problem to hit first anywhere in
Oregon, the Klamath Basin, based on all
the struggles it has had over many years,
would be a good first bet.
But it won’t be the last.
Improved precipitation in the last
three months has brought snowpack
levels at least closer to normal — but not
all the way yet. At the end of last year
Mount Hood webcams showed hardly
any snow on Oregon’s highest mountain.
The snowpack’s measure there near the
end of 2021 stood at .3 inches, about 2%
of the historic median.
Historic snowpack levels by decade
(going back a half century) were high-
est in the 80s, nearly as solid in the
90s, dropped a little in the 2000s, and
collapsed in the 2010s.
The snow pack affects farmers, home-
owners, businesses — directly or indi-
rectly, everyone in Oregon.
Some of the best numbers for figur-
ing where the state is on water supply can
be found in the Snotel reports, a water
E
Malheur Enterprise/Contributed Photo
Lake Owyhee in southeastern Oregon is a major source of irrigation water for farms
in Malheur County.
data bank run by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, measuring levels down to
checkpoints in small streams.
One of the key stats is the snow water
equivalent, a quick read on the snow-
pack, which supplies a lot of the runoff
water used through the year. A “percent
of median” shows how that number
compares to the past years.
The oldest Snotel chart online, from
1978, shows a median for the Malheur
watershed at 175, the John Day at 191,
the Willamette at 81 and the Rogue at 68.
Those are not unusual numbers for most
years since then.
This month, just three water basins —
the coast (treated as a single basin), the
Willamette River and the Owyhee River
— are above normal. Most of the rest are
well below normal.
This is the regional piece of a larger
picture.
A recent large-scale study of the
changing snowpack by a group of
federal and university researchers found,
“Future mountain snowpacks are further
projected to decline, and even disappear,
but at unknown rates. While the complete
loss of snow is the worst-case scenario,
a plausible situation … (would involve)
a shift from rare or short term to more
persistent low-to-no snow occurrences.”
The report added, “Low-to-no snow
will impose a series of cascading hydro-
logic changes to the water — energy
balance, including vegetation processes,
surface and subsurface water storage
and, ultimately, streamflow that directly
impacts water management.”
The snowpack problem is not new.
The U.S. Forest Service is among the
organizations that has been looking into
this for some years.
What’s gotten less attention is that
many approaches to dealing with it are
likely to be local and regional. Many
answers to Oregon’s drought will have to
come from Oregon.
What can Oregon do?
Conservation, of course, and some
proposals at the Capitol and elsewhere
to curb climate change could help in the
long term. More surgical approaches
could accomplish a lot locally and sooner.
A list of Forest Service options
suggests some of them: “Increase
in-stream flows with dry-season water
conservation to reduce withdrawals
… Increase upland water storage …
Develop mitigation measures and strat-
egies to compensate for loss of snow-
pack location and duration … Restore
and enhance water resource function and
distribution at the appropriate water-
shed level. Prioritize watersheds based
on condition and a variety of resource
values, including wildlife … Reduce
riparian impacts by storing more water
on the landscape.”
Along with this: Increase research into
our water management options so they’re
as thoroughgoing as our research into the
size of the problem.
With this message comes the urgency:
We need to do more than just fret.
———
Randy Stapilus has researched and
written about Northwest politics and
issues since 1976 for a long list of news-
papers and other publications.