How to Tackle Climate Change AND Poverty

Oregon can become a hub for Green Energy and Climate Tech, creating great jobs and leading the way to a carbon-neutral world.

If anyone here in Oregon had doubts about climate change, the Labor Day fires of 2020 should have erased them. One of those forest fires reached within eight miles of our farm in Yamhill, and the sky was an apocalyptic red and gray. I now understand what hell looks like.

Then came the summer heat dome of 2021: Portland reached 117 degrees. I now understand what hell feels like.

The consequences of climate change disproportionately land on those who did the least to cause it. The poorest and most marginalized people produce the least carbon and suffer the most.

U.S. Government photo of a forest fire in California

So it’s not surprising that I get asked about climate change as I travel the state and meet Oregonians, and that I also get asked what can be done to create jobs and hope in places outside the Willamette Valley that feel scorched, parched and left behind.

“Young people feel there is nothing for them here,” a mayor told me last week as I traveled along the Oregon coast meeting people. “They leave because they see no future here, and they find work elsewhere. We become towns with just old people and tourists. That’s not healthy.” I heard similar concerns expressed this week in Eastern Oregon.

A new strategy to tackle climate change in Oregon can also create good jobs, while also providing global leadership to save our planet. But first a word about the present approach.

For now, Oregon and other states are focused on reducing carbon emissions, and that’s of course crucial. Oregon has set a target of having clean electricity by 2040, while the Biden administration has gone a bit further and said it aims for the entire country to have clean electricity by 2035.

I’m all in favor of targets, but I’d just note that it’s crucial to have a pathway to reach them. Both Oregon and the U.S. have missed previous climate goals by a mile.

So let’s use the targets as a spur for action, not as a substitute for action. I’d also like to see Oregon not just cut carbon emissions but also simultaneously pioneer another approach to a greener and more prosperous and inclusive future: Becoming a hub for green energy and climate technology.

Climate tech refers to the array of innovations that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. You may see climate tech every day. It’s the solar panels on a neighbor’s roof, the wind turbines in the Columbia River Gorge, the electric vehicle charging at the restaurant. And new climate tech is emerging that may be revolutionary. Cement contributes about 8 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and whoever develops a green cement (there’s already considerable progress on this) will help the planet and also create vast numbers of good jobs. Whoever devises a green aviation fuel will do something similar.

No climate tech hub has yet been established, but California, Washington and Texas are all competing for the title. Meanwhile, we in Oregon have important geographical advantages.

Oregon has some of the world’s best ocean waves to generate electricity, plus constant offshore winds to power turbines. We have magma close to the earth’s surface in the Cascades, creating opportunities for geothermal. We have outstanding wind and solar potential in much of the state. We have excellent battery companies, like ESS, and an exciting electric vehicle company. We have endless basalt formations in Eastern Oregon that are optimal for carbon capture and sequestration. We’re developing new hydrogen sources across the state.

In short, we have many advantages in the realm of green energy, and we should be able to attract climate tech investment because of our relatively clean electricity and because Oregon’s eco-friendly reputation is better for a climate company’s brand than, say, Texas.

One reason for Oregon to seek to become America’s climate tech hub is that this would develop technologies to benefit our entire planet. What will move the planetary needle will be climate tech initiatives that persuade China, India, Brazil and other global players to adopt low-carbon technologies, alongside the United States and Europe.

Yet another more selfish reason to pursue climate tech: It’s an economic development program. Green energy can create good jobs in parts of Oregon that have been left behind and desperately need a new business model.

Parts of coastal Oregon, like Coos Bay, once thrived with logging and are now struggling. Offshore wind and waves offer a potential new business model for those coastal areas. And geothermal is most promising in the Cascades and areas east, in old timber towns where mills have closed, and in some Native American communities seeking new business models. We should engage these communities that have been left behind and work out new economic models including climate tech.

A new solar farm in Lake County, Oregon. Solar and wind offer new business models for Lake County, Oregon’s poorest. Most of the jobs are in construction. (Photo courtesy Jake Stephens, NewSun Energy)

Oregon’s poorest county is Lake County, in the south central part of the state, where a new solar farm developed by NewSun Energy offers a glimpse of an economic future built in part on renewable energy. Lake County and Harney County both have excellent potential for solar, wind and geothermal, but the grid needs to be improved to carry the green power to where it’s most needed.

Likewise, in Sherman County, to the north, officials told me that more wind turbines could be added, but there is limited grid capacity to take the power elsewhere. Improving the grid will be a crucial element of climate modernization.

We also need to make sure that schools, community colleges, apprenticeships and job training programs are producing skilled workers needed to take up these good jobs, and that universities are producing the climate engineers needed.

The path I’m describing to create good jobs won’t be easy. Not all of these technologies will pan out; some of the experts I’ve spoken to are skeptical of ocean waves, for example. This path will be arduous — but we have no alternative. We must address climate change and we must provide economic hope for left-behind regions. So let’s get started.