Sideline holdouts forfeit say about way game is played

In a June 19 letter to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, nine Senate Republicans proclaimed, “It is essential that we work together to find solutions that benefit all Oregonians,” united in an effort to “ensure a sustainable and prosperous future for our state.”

The irony is, Senate Republicans staged walkouts two years in a row to prevent majority Democrats from moving forward on major pieces of important legislation, including a cap-and-trade bill attempting to address legislatively the climate change issue the DEQ is now attempting to address administratively instead.

In fact, six of the nine new-found advocates of legislative cooperation are barred from seeking re-election because they staged a walkout again last year in an effort to stifle legislative action not seen to be going their way.

Irony? Maybe a better word for it might be hypocrisy.

Members of the Senate nine — including our own lame-duck walkout participant, Brian Boquist — claim in their letter to “advocate for policies that promote both environmental stewardship and economic prosperity.” But their legislative record demonstrates a predilection for valuing the economic over the environmental at every turn.

Too many Republicans minimize if not outright deny the impacts of climate change — even when yet another intense heat dome is scorching the West and yet another powerful hurricane is battering the South. We wish it weren’t the case, but if we waited for the GOP rear guard to engage in constructive action, we’d risk missing the chance to make any meaningful difference.

It’s easy to harbor reservations about the workings of the Democratic initiative currently in play, and/or the executive order then-Gov. Kate Brown used to set it in motion.

But when you repeatedly stage crippling walkouts to thwart legislative action, that’s the risk you take. You can’t cut off the normal avenue, then credibly complain about being end run.

As it happens, this represents the DEQ’s second attempt at formulation of implementing rules.

Northwest Natural Gas, the Oregon Farm Bureau, Associated Oregon Loggers and an array of resource industry partners managed to get an earlier effort voided on procedural grounds. They also challenged the constitutionality of DEQ’s underlying authority, but the court limited its ruling to procedural issues.

The coalition was led by Northwest Natural, which said it was committed to moving “constructively” to address climate change.

The rub is, the company and its fellow travelers seem, by and large, to be limiting their definition of “constructive” to policies having no material impact on their continuation of business as usual. And that’s going to have no material impact on our global climate crisis — not regionally, not nationally and most certainly not globally.

We favor legislative action, if and when the minority GOP demonstrates a renewed willingness to participate. In the meantime, we see no choice but to press ahead via whatever process our system of government affords.