A4 BAKER CITY HERALD • TUESDAY, JULY 5, 2022
BAKER CITY
Opinion
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Baker City, Oregon
EDITORIAL
Voter turnout
surprising,
welcome
O
regon’s voter turnout exceeded expectations
during the May 17 gubernatorial primary,
and that should be good news to all voters.
However, we need to do better.
More than 1 million ballots were cast in the recent
primary elections and that shows we, as a state, do
care about what our political future will look like but
more voters still need to get involved in every one of
the state’s elections.
Democracy is an institution ideally suited for good
governance, but it can only do so, can only function at
its highest level, if those who live under that democ-
racy participate.
Participation in elections — especially off-year pres-
idential contests — never show a steady line of prog-
ress but instead dips and climbs depending on the
year, the generation or the major issues of the time.
We as Americans tend to get involved in politics
during critical periods of our history and then slowly
fade into the background when there doesn’t appear
to be a crucial problem to solve or to overcome.
There are probably a host of reasons why voter par-
ticipation dips and rises. Any one of which that could
go a long way to explaining the lack of involvement.
The advent of social media — where we become more
and more isolated into our political silos — certainly
hasn’t helped but all of our woes cannot be laid at the
feet of technological advances.
Regardless of the current state of technology, every
voter holds a sacred responsibility to become involved
with democracy during an election.
The franchise to vote is a hard-earned privilege be-
stowed upon us by the sacrifice of countless others in
our conflicts that trace back more than 200 years. To
ignore the benefits of that franchise is to subtly disre-
gard the price so many in our armed forces paid for us
to continue to practice Democracy.
One vote does matter. So, does thousands. One vote
can also make a difference.
That more people voted in the gubernatorial prima-
ries than expected is excellent news for our democ-
racy at every level. Let’s just hope such commitment to
democracy continues.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the Baker City
Herald. Columns, letters and cartoons on this page ex-
press the opinions of the authors and not necessarily
that of the Baker City Herald.
CONTACT YOUR PUBLIC OFFICIALS
President Joe Biden: The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington,
D.C. 20500; 202-456-1111; to send comments, go to www.whitehouse.gov.
U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley: D.C. office: 313 Hart Senate Office Building, U.S. Senate,
Washington, D.C., 20510; 202-224-3753; fax 202-228-3997. Portland office: One
World Trade Center, 121 S.W. Salmon St. Suite 1250, Portland, OR 97204; 503-
326-3386; fax 503-326-2900. Baker City office, 1705 Main St., Suite 504, 541-278-
1129; merkley.senate.gov.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden: D.C. office: 221 Dirksen Senate Office Building,
Washington, D.C., 20510; 202-224-5244; fax 202-228-2717. La Grande office: 105
Fir St., No. 210, La Grande, OR 97850; 541-962-7691; fax, 541-963-0885; wyden.
senate.gov.
U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz (2nd District): D.C. office: 1239 Longworth House Office
Building, Washington, D.C., 20515, 202-225-6730; fax 202-225-5774. Medford
office: 14 N. Central Avenue Suite 112, Medford, OR 97850; Phone: 541-776-
4646; fax: 541-779-0204; Ontario office: 2430 S.W. Fourth Ave., No. 2, Ontario, OR
97914; Phone: 541-709-2040. bentz.house.gov.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown: 254 State Capitol, Salem, OR 97310; 503-378-3111;
www.governor.oregon.gov.
Oregon State Treasurer Tobias Read: oregon.treasurer@ost.state.or.us; 350
Winter St. NE, Suite 100, Salem OR 97301-3896; 503-378-4000.
Oregon Attorney General Ellen F. Rosenblum: Justice Building, Salem, OR
97301-4096; 503-378-4400.
Oregon Legislature: Legislative documents and information are available
online at www.leg.state.or.us.
State Sen. Lynn Findley (R-Ontario): Salem office: 900 Court St. N.E., S-403,
Salem, OR 97301; 503-986-1730. Email: Sen.LynnFindley@oregonlegislature.gov
State Rep. Mark Owens (R-Crane): Salem office: 900 Court St. N.E., H-475,
Salem, OR 97301; 503-986-1460. Email: Rep.MarkOwens@oregonlegislature.gov
Baker City Hall: 1655 First Street, P.O. Box 650, Baker City, OR 97814; 541-523-
6541; fax 541-524-2049. City Council meets the second and fourth Tuesdays at
7 p.m. in Council Chambers. Councilors Jason Spriet, Kerry McQuisten, Shane
Alderson, Joanna Dixon, Kenyon Damschen, Johnny Waggoner Sr. and Dean
Guyer.
Baker City administration: 541-523-6541. Jonathan Cannon, city manager; Ty
Duby, police chief; Sean Lee, fire chief; Michelle Owen, public works director.
Baker County Commission: Baker County Courthouse 1995 3rd St., Baker City,
OR 97814; 541-523-8200. Meets the first and third Wednesdays at 9 a.m.; Bill
Harvey (chair), Mark Bennett, Bruce Nichols.
Baker County departments: 541-523-8200. Travis Ash, sheriff; Noodle Perkins,
roadmaster; Greg Baxter, district attorney; Alice Durflinger, county treasurer;
Stefanie Kirby, county clerk; Kerry Savage, county assessor.
Baker School District: 2090 4th Street, Baker City, OR 97814; 541-524-2260;
fax 541-524-2564. Superintendent: Mark Witty. Board meets the third Tuesday
of the month at 6 p.m. Council Chambers, Baker City Hall,1655 First St.; Chris
Hawkins, Andrew Bryan, Travis Cook, Jessica Dougherty, Julie Huntington.
COLUMN
High Court blocks EPA’s power grab
BY DERRICK MORGAN
The Spirit of ’76 is alive and well at the
Supreme Court. Back then, the colonials
rejected the rule of a far-away, unaccount-
able government. After securing their
freedom, they quickly organized a govern-
ment that gave Congress, the duly elected
representatives of the people, responsibil-
ity for making national policy decisions.
Last week, the Supreme Court acted
in accord with that spirit by rejecting a
power grab by the Environmental Protec-
tion Agency and reserving for Congress
the right to set far-reaching climate change
policy.
The central question in West Virginia
v. EPA came down to this: Who is respon-
sible for determining if carbon emissions
are a problem and whether something
should be done about it? You may recall
that President Barack Obama spent more
than a year trying to convince Congress to
pass a comprehensive bill to reduce emis-
sions as a way of trying to stem climate
change. Ultimately, he even threatened
Congress, saying that if lawmakers didn’t
act to reduce carbon emissions, he would
– with his pen and his phone. Yet even
though his own party had a House major-
ity and a filibuster-proof majority in the
Senate, Congress balked at capping carbon
emissions.
Obama followed through on his threats
in the form of the “Clean Power Plan” –
the EPA’s proposal to force whole states
and utilities to stop using fossil fuels in fa-
vor of less reliable, and often more expen-
sive, sources like wind and solar. Always
inventive, Obama asserted that the EPA
could stretch the authorities in the Clean
Air Act, written in 1970 to deal with toxic
pollutants.
Up to that point, the law had been used
to reduce toxic emissions source by source,
using the best available technology. So, for
example, the EPA could require an avail-
able scrubber be added to a coal plant
to reduce sulfur dioxide. Now, Obama
claimed, the EPA could use a systems ap-
proach and require states and utilities to
switch fuel sources altogether, essentially
completely remaking the entire electricity
grid.
Several states, led by West Virginia,
sued the EPA. They got their hearing be-
fore the Supreme Court this February.
On June 30, the court ruled that Con-
gress must specify authority clearly for an
agency to be authorized to implement a
policy of such vast economic and political
significance.
Justice Antonin Scalia once wrote that
Congress does not “hide elephants in
mouseholes.” Yes, agencies can “fill in the
blanks” where they are given direction, for
example, by setting the amount of sulfur
dioxide that can come out of a coal plant.
But they cannot take it upon themselves to
change the entire electricity grid.
No matter what your view of climate
change, we should all agree that Congress
is the right venue to have this issue de-
bated and decided. Unlike the EPA’s em-
ployees, who can’t be voted out of office,
lawmakers are accountable to “We, the
People.” Representatives and Senators can
make compromises that include carefully
considered trade-offs, and their work will
endure past one administration.
President Joe Biden has pledged to re-
duce greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52%
by 2030. My colleagues at The Heritage
Foundation estimate that taking the steps
needed to make such drastic reductions
would result in nearly 8 million lost jobs
in 2026, a 90 percent increase in gasoline
prices, and a more than $7 trillion hit to
the economy. That’s vast economic signifi-
cance, indeed.
And it’s why the “elephant” of carbon
capping policy should be debated by Con-
gress, not advanced through rulemaking
by unaccountable bureaucrats. In fact, car-
bon reductions have been debated repeat-
edly – and always rejected, including in
2006 and 2010. Some are not happy with
that result, but their dissatisfaction should
motivate them to persuade their neighbors
of the wisdom of their policy.
Now, thanks to the West Virginia v.
EPA decision, Biden’s climate plans and
the inevitable trade-offs can be examined
through hearings and a robust debate by
representatives who are accountable to the
people.
Derrick Morgan is the executive vice president of
The Heritage Foundation.
OTHER VIEWS
Supreme Court made it harder to save the planet
Editorial from the Los An-
geles Times:
At a moment when the
world should be racing to pre-
vent the worst effects of global
warming, the Supreme Court
just made it harder for the
U.S. to cut carbon emissions
from power plants quickly and
cost-effectively.
In yet another ruling this
session that upended norms,
the court said in its 6-3 deci-
sion June 30 that the U.S. Envi-
ronmental Protection Agency
overstepped its authority in
trying to develop sweeping
regulations to reduce cli-
mate-warming pollutants.
To be clear, the ruling didn’t
remove the EPA’s authority to
cut carbon emissions from in-
dividual power plants, which
are responsible for about a
quarter of the nation’s green-
house gas emissions. The
agency still can — and should
— require that power plants
install equipment that can
ratchet down pollution. But
the decision limits the EPA’s
ability to enact more far-reach-
ing and creative regulatory
programs affecting the power
sector, such as a nationwide
carbon cap-and-trade sys-
tem similar to California’s
that some power industry and
business groups have sup-
ported as more flexible com-
pliance models.
With the stakes so high, it’s
devastating that the EPA will
lose valuable regulatory tools
to help slow climate change.
The ruling also foreshadows
more fights and lawsuits from
industry groups attempting to
prevent federal agencies from
enacting big, important reg-
ulations to address evolving
problems. The U.S. has a long
history of empowering agen-
cies to develop regulations for
cleaner air and water, safer
workplaces and consumer
protections from dangerous
products, and the ruling could
encourage more challenges to
regulatory agencies’ authority.
The majority opinion, writ-
ten by Chief Justice John G.
Roberts Jr., said Congress didn’t
give the EPA the power to de-
velop regulations that could
shift the power sector from
fossil fuels to renewable en-
ergy. Such major decisions and
transformational programs
should come with clear direc-
tion from Congress, he argued.
But in a dissent signed by
the court’s three liberal judges,
Justice Elena Kagan wrote that
the majority was ignoring Con-
gress’ intent when lawmakers
passed the Clean Air Act in
the 1970s — which was to em-
power the experts to come up
with regulatory systems that
can evolve over time to reduce
emissions in the most cost-ef-
ficient, protective way possible.
Instead, she argued, the court
blocked regulators from carry-
ing out their mandate.
“Whatever else this Court
may know about, it does not
have a clue about how to ad-
dress climate change,” Kagan
wrote. “And let’s say the obvi-
ous: The stakes here are high.
Yet the Court today prevents
congressionally authorized
agency action to curb power
plants’ carbon dioxide emis-
sions. The Court appoints it-
self — instead of Congress or
the expert agency — the deci-
sionmaker on climate policy.
I cannot think of many things
more frightening.”
She’s right. The stakes are
terrifyingly high.
The burning of fossil fu-
els and other human activity
have already warmed Earth
by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit
compared with preindustrial
levels, a United Nations re-
port warned earlier this year.
Climate change has worsened
wildfires, droughts, air pollu-
tion and heat waves; caused
species to go extinct and trees
to die en masse; swallowed up
coastal habitat; reduced crop
yields; increased hunger and
shrunk glaciers and other cru-
cial water supplies.
The world can still avert
the worst consequences of
the overheating of our planet
— mass extinction and cata-
strophically severe droughts,
floods, heat waves and sea level
rise — if emissions are cut in
half by 2030. But the United
States, the world’s biggest pol-
luter historically, has moved
far too slowly to end the na-
tion’s reliance on fossil fuels
and transition to clean, renew-
able energy.
The Supreme Court ruling
only makes the work harder.
The Biden administration is
currently developing a rule to
cut carbon from power plants.
Thursday’s court decision puts
new constraints on possible
regulatory models, even ones
that might be faster or cheaper
than ordering power plants
to install pollution-control
technology. Still, Biden’s EPA
should pursue the most ag-
gressive standards; there’s sim-
ply no more time to waste.
The decision also puts the
onus on Congress. Sure, Con-
gress could pass a law clearly
giving the EPA the authority
to pass sweeping regulations
to cut carbon. But for decades,
Republican and some Demo-
cratic lawmakers have refused
to act on climate change, punt-
ing the responsibility to the
executive branch and the EPA.
It’s time for Congress to finally
buck fossil fuel interests and
pass a comprehensive bill to
accelerate the shift from coal
and gas to clean electricity and
clean vehicles.
And Congress should make
it abundantly clear that the
EPA is empowered to adopt
the regulations needed to slash
greenhouse gases across indus-
tries and slow global warming.
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