Oregon climate legislation torpedoed by rural interests

High Country News reported a few weeks ago on the failure of state legislation that would have curbed carbon emissions.  The story is headlined, "Rural anxieties derailed Oregon's climate plans."  The proposed legislation sent Republican legislators fleeing the state--to Idaho, just across the state line for many in the state's most conservative eastern reaches--to avoid the vote.

These excerpts sum up the rural politics (and some other aspects) of the matter:

After the climate legislation was shelved, lawmakers passed more than 100 bills in a frenzied weekend before the legislative session ended on June 30. But the battle over the carbon emissions legislation revealed a deepening political chasm between Oregon’s conservative rural areas and liberal population centers. Republicans held firm to their base, aligning with legacy industries and the rural jobs they support, rather than engaging in restructuring the economy to address carbon pollution. While the potential costs of the climate legislation took center stage, a deeper economic truth went unspoken — that the issues that hamper the fiscal well-being of rural Oregon have less to do with environmental regulations than with broader market forces, from international policy to demographics.

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at least initially, the climate bill would have cost rural Oregonians more. According to an analysis by The Oregonian, fuel taxes would hit wallets harder outside urban centers, where people drive longer distances in less fuel-efficient vehicles and lack access to public transportation. Higher energy costs also raised concerns about milling and manufacturing jobs leaving the state for friendlier economic conditions.

Still, Oregon’s rural communities face larger forces than the proposed carbon pricing system. For nearly three decades, the state’s less-populated counties have fallen behind urban centers in wages and employment.

I have written elsewhere about the higher cost of transportation in rural areas--in part for the reasons mentioned here.  Yes, some rural people could get by with smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.  Many others could not because of the nature of the work they do.

I appreciate the tone of Carl Segerstrom's reporting in this piece--and also that High Country News typically takes the perspectives of rural folks--including their economic concerns--seriously.  I don't recall ever seeing this publication ridicule "rural people as rural people," because their rurality was accompanied by an implicit (let alone explicit) presumption of incompetence or idiocy.