Front page yesterday |
Front page today |
Salem Reporter used the hashtags signalling support then weakly tried to disavow, for example. |
At Willamette, an ironic parallel |
Lt. Treven Upkes, spokesman for Salem Police Department, said that there won’t be any road closures associated with the event and that organizers didn’t need a permit.
Just before 10am, State/Court and Center/Marion were slow Even the bikeways, Union and Chemeketa, had slow traffic |
Update, February 8th
It turns out the protesters do have a whiff of a platform. From Salem Reporter:
[The group wants] the state to plant trees along roads to act as carbon sinks and wants state government agencies to buy goods and services locally to reduce their carbon footprint. It also wants Oregon to boost its recycling infrastructure and allow businesses to write off more quickly the costs of upgrading to greener technology....Planting trees and more recycling will not scale, and by themselves are mainly ornamental. In fact, they are virtue-signalling rather than substantive! This is more evidence the protesters are not serious and just want to nullify.
“We’re going to continue to try to push on the belief that you can address carbon without taxation,” [former State Representative and now spoksperson Julie] Parrish said. “The bottom line, at the end of our meeting, we asked, do you want to raise revenue, or do you want to fix carbon? If you want to raise revenue, we’re going to have a problem. If you want to fix carbon and hear these solutions, we’ll come to the table with you to address them.”
Moreover, conservative economists have argued a Pigouvian tax is the right way to achieve a market-oriented solution, and the press is failing when they do not push back on the rejection of it, especially when by supposed "conservatives," and instead resort to he-said, she-said false equivalence.
Not a crazy Liberal: Hank Paulson, Jr at podium, via Wikipedia |
THERE is a time for weighing evidence and a time for acting. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout my work in finance, government and conservation, it is to act before problems become too big to manage.
For too many years, we failed to rein in the excesses building up in the nation’s financial markets. When the credit bubble burst in 2008, the damage was devastating. Millions suffered. Many still do.
We’re making the same mistake today with climate change. We’re staring down a climate bubble that poses enormous risks to both our environment and economy. The warning signs are clear and growing more urgent as the risks go unchecked.
This is a crisis we can’t afford to ignore. I feel as if I’m watching as we fly in slow motion on a collision course toward a giant mountain. We can see the crash coming, and yet we’re sitting on our hands rather than altering course.
We need to act now, even though there is much disagreement, including from members of my own Republican Party, on how to address this issue while remaining economically competitive. They’re right to consider the economic implications. But we must not lose sight of the profound economic risks of doing nothing.
The solution can be a fundamentally conservative one that will empower the marketplace to find the most efficient response. We can do this by putting a price on emissions of carbon dioxide — a carbon tax. Few in the United States now pay to emit this potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere we all share. Putting a price on emissions will create incentives to develop new, cleaner energy technologies.
Update 2, February 12th
Leverage on Climate? Yesterday's Oregonian |
Leverage on climate. Today's Statesman |
Update 3, March 6th
The deal turned out not to offer leverage, and the Nullifiers succeeded.
A successful nullification Register-Guard today (with the SJ story) |
5 comments:
Updated with comment on the supposed alternative the protesters want to offer.
(And updated with a couple of clips on the logging deal)
OPB is suggesting that there might not be leverage -
'Initially, [Senate Republican Leader Baertschiger] said the historic forest management agreement undercut his ability to block the climate bill. A day later, his tone changed. Republicans aren’t beholden to large corporate timber industries, he said. In other words: he’s willing to blow up the forest management deal if it means stopping cap-and-trade.
“What they basically said is if you want the timber industry’s pesticide bill to pass, you’re going to have to stick around for cap-and-trade. And we simply can’t do that,” Baertschiger told conservative radio host Lars Larson Thursday. “So the timber industry didn’t do us any favor. I don’t know who was advising them politically, but I would give them their walking papers.”'
https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-timber-deal-salem-forests-conservation-logging-legislature/
The other day Salem Reporter wrote an apologia with reader testimonials. But the one they chose to end on was from Bill Sizemore.
If you are appealing to his sense that you are neutral, you are far from neutral!
https://www.salemreporter.com/posts/1935/editors-note-readers-react-to-column-about-capitol-protests-telling-us-to-keep-going
The Nullifiers blew up everything. Only 3 minor bills passed both Chambers. Updated with RG clip for SJ story.
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