It's Time to Put a Price on Carbon in Oregon

By Rhett Lawrence, Conservation Director

The Sierra Club’s members and supporters in Oregon know that we have been working for many years to fight climate change in our state and make polluters pay their fair share by putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions. For the last few sessions of the Oregon Legislature, that effort took the form of our support for the Clean Energy Jobs Bill.

In the 2018 short session of the legislature, we worked valiantly to try to pass a strong Clean Energy Jobs bill, but as noted in my blogpost earlier this year, not just any bill would do. Unfortunately, we and our coalition were unable to pass any carbon pricing legislation in 2018, so we’re headed back to try again in 2019’s long session.

One thing that did come out of the 2018 session was the creation of the bicameral, bipartisan Committee on Carbon Reduction. This committee - co-chaired by Senate President Peter Courtney and House Speaker Tina Kotek - has been meeting monthly for much of this year to assess policy options that will shape the legislation that gets introduced in 2019. (Another good thing we’ve gotten is public assurances from President Courtney and Speaker Kotek that a Clean Energy Jobs bill WILL pass in 2019.) The committee has also been working closely with the carbon policy advisors in Governor Brown’s office to steer the course for this legislation.

While we await actual bill language from the committee, our coalition working on Clean Energy Jobs has created a document outlining the policy outcomes we need to see addressed in the legislation brought forward. And as before, it’s important to stress that not just any bill will do: we need to ensure that the legislation we pass in 2019 both reduces greenhouse gas emissions and creates clean energy jobs, while not disproportionately impacting low-income and frontline communities. We believe if the principles laid out in this document are followed, we can create a bill that accomplishes those aims.

The time to act is now. Indeed, the time to act was a long time ago. But we cannot afford to wait any longer to pass a climate bill in Oregon and start doing our part to get a handle on the climate change we see happening all around us. We are hopeful that the legislation that results from the Committee on Carbon Reduction will follow the principles laid out in our coalition document so that we can all work together in the 2019 session to ensure its passage in the strongest possible form. And we will need your support and activism to make sure that happens!