… And so is public school funding. Why bother with either? With the Air Quality Index in Union County this week exceeding a PM2.5 rating of over 1,100 (1-50 is considered healthy to breath), I return to my favorite time of year when Willamette Valley progressives come out of the woodwork to tell me that a steady diet of wildfire smoke is good for me, actually. I do not expect far left opinions on air quality to change, because that would involve a stringent scientific analysis of wildfire mitigation contrary to emotions about rural areas, and it would return working class organized labor in rural areas to their glory days of economic productivity. For the rest of us interested in solving problems rather than looking cool to fellow anti-environment activists, solving the problem of anthropogenic mega-fires requires a surprisingly simple understanding of natural resource management and the Oregon Constitution’s school funding mechanism.
Fire is good for forests. To the uninitiated, this may sound insensitive to those of us choking right now. Just remember, I too have been choking all week. Western forests depend on wildfires, which have been a natural element of their ecology since creation. Wildfires clear dead brush, open up cones that are otherwise unable to spread seeds due to heat-resistant resins, clear the canopy for lower level plants, and control pests. This assertion is not the result of recent scientific studies – fire’s place in the ecosystem was well understood by Native Americans, who honed forest management via anthropogenic fire to a science centuries prior to contact with Europeans. So why is fire so bad now?
The hippies are quick to point to climate change, an existential threat caused by the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that is projected to warp Earth’s climates over time. Oregon contributes a negligible amount of carbon emissions, to the point that State climate scientists have admitted to the legislature that the Beaver State going net zero immediately would have no impact on climate change whatsoever. What has contributed to climate change, and will continue contributing to climate change, is Oregon’s anthropogenic mega-fires.
Fire management may take a few different routes. Absent human intervention, wildfires will burn in an isolated forest with some regularity, keeping the forest healthy without being destroyed. Human intervention may involve a mix of anthropogenic fire and natural wildfire as resource management dictates. Alternatively, forest lands may be managed with minimal fire, primarily by sustainably logging and grazing lands indisposed to burn. Logging used to be one of the Oregon’s top industries, elevating the economic prosperity of hard-working loggers and millwrights with the tireless backing of their labor unions. Oregon has chosen the final and scientifically ill-advised option of not logging at all and trying to fight the fires that start as a result since the 1990’s, under the direction of anti-environment activists who spur natural resource destruction policies through donations to the Democratic Party of Oregon.
The Oregon Department of State Lands is governed by the State Lands Board, a body comprising the Governor, Secretary of State, and State Treasurer. Created by the Oregon Constitution in 1859, they are chartered to oversee lands provided by the US government and sustainably harvest natural resources to fund schools. In 1990, the Department of State Lands contributed $14 million to Oregon’s $200 billion Common School Fund, which then disbursed a total of $14 million to Oregon public schools that year. Oregon had a comparatively light wildfire season that year, with well-maintained public lands experiencing 1,500 wildfire ignitions and 110,000 statewide.
The situation was completely flipped in 2020, when Oregon had our worst wildfire season on record. The Department of State Lands transferred $1.9 million to the Common School Fund, which contributed $103 per student to Oregon’s public schools out of its total $600 million distribution. Oregon’s wildfire season saw over 1.2 million acres burned with 5 simultaneous megafires and almost 36 million metric tons of carbon emissions, the single highest source of carbon emissions in the Beaver State. This was not an anomaly, this was the result of three decades of intentional mismanagement of the forests by massively increasing fuel supplies without actively managing growth, either through fire activity or logging. That wildfire season made climate change worse, destroyed natural resources, burned 4,000 homes, and most tragically caused 11 human casualties. This year’s bad air quality is brought to you by what is projected to be an atrocious wildfire season, with over 577,000 acres burned by wildfires so far. You cannot pay for education if you burn down the State lands the federal government gifted Oregon to pay for education.
Oregon alone is not guilty of mismanaging state lands, as similar anti-environment and pro-climate change interests remained active in federal politics and litigation. Many of those federal decisions are made by insulated bureaucrats who inform disinterested political leaders. I was encouraged at a recent Elgin City Council meeting when one of our County Commissioners reported increased timber harvests on federal lands, the first sign of encouragement he has received in nearly a decade of trying to push for sustainable natural resource management. In the Beaver State, elected officials directly control forestry management and school funding, and every year these politicians choose under-funded schools, poor air quality, and massive carbon emissions over common sense forest management. At the same time, the methods necessary to keep fires in their rightful ecological place, manage forests sustainably, and fund schools appropriately are very well understood by these policy makers, who simply make poor decisions to appease the concerns of their donors. The Trump Administration has gotten the message, and while federal lands will not be cleared of overloaded forests immediately, the President is sending our forests and air quality in the right direction.
Governor Kotek’s campaign strategy of mindlessly yoking Senator Christine Drazan to President Trump is going to backfire more and more in regions where we cannot breath the air around us do to the incumbent’s capitulation to supporters of anti-environment forest policies. Conservation is a sacred human duty, directed by conscience and science, and the Democratic Party of Oregon has declined to fulfill that duty. I only hear crocodile tears when Portland leftists like State Representative Ricki Ruiz mourn victims of climate change-driven wildfires in Eastern Oregon. Given the way Rep. Ruiz’s party bows down to conservation opponents, it is certain that he would light a match in an Indian Valley forest himself rather than dare oppose one of his party’s largest donor groups. As long as the Democratic Party of Oregon banks its electoral success on this blood money, and as long as Oregon Republicans obsess over voter fraud conspiracy theories instead of actual get out the vote efforts, the Beaver State will continue to choke. Maybe it is time to stop worrying and embrace the smoke.
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