Check out all of the Mercury's 2018 election endorsements! From the race for Oregon governor to the fight for affordable housing, we've got you covered.
Earlier this month, the United Nationsā Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sounded a red alert for our overpopulated planet. Without massive, worldwide changes, the IPCC warned, the already lethal effects of climate changeāhotter temperatures, bigger wildfires, and intensifying hurricanesāwill include longer droughts, rising sea levels, and climate refugees fleeing widespread starvation. None of those predictions are new, but the timeline for them is shorter than anyone expected: two decades.
If history is any indication, the IPCCās report will be, for all intents and purposes, ignored. Climate change is so horrificāand fighting it on any meaningful scale is so mind-bogglingly difficultāthat itās easy to pretend it will only affect others, that thereās no way our children will die of thirst or be burned alive. But some of them will, and the very entities that could do something to stop itāour national leaders and the corporations that, in many ways, hold just as much powerāchoose to do nothing.
No oneās pretending that Measure 26-201, which would establish a Portland Clean Energy Initiative will single-handedly avert our Mad Max future. But it is doing something.
If approved by voters, the initiative will collect a meager feeāa 1 percent ābusiness license surchargeāāto Portland retailers that have annual total revenues of at least $1 billion. That fund would help weatherize Portlandersā homes, train Portlanders for green jobs, and increase the cityās use of clean energy and our production of locally grown food. Notably, the surcharge wonāt apply to the basic goods everyone needsālike groceries and health careāand just as notably, the fund will prioritize helping Portlandās low-income residents and people of color, the very populations most susceptible to climate change.
This is a tiny expense for a larger good, and for anyone paying attention, itās a no-brainer: Measure 26-201 is championed by a wide swath of environmental and social organizations from the Sierra Club to the Oregon Food Bank, and a slew of forward-thinking politicians and experts, from Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, to Senator Jeff Merkley.
Meanwhile, the measureās opponents include a cartoonish lineup of the big businesses that can, and should, do more: Amazon, Comcast, Walmart, Standard Insurance, US Bank, PapĆ©, the Greenbrier Companies, Bank of America, and Kroger, the retail giant that owns Fred Meyer.
In the Mercuryās endorsement interviews, the only wobbly opposition to Measure 26-201 came from the Portland Business Alliance (PBA), a lobbying group with a history of fighting common-sense efforts to make Portland more environmentally friendly and healthy, from Better Naito to earned sick leave. PBAās new president and CEO, Andrew Hoan, vowed that a 1 percent tax on some of the worldās biggest corporations would be directly passed on to Portlandersābut thatās an unproven argument that, in a time of need, encourages people to do nothing.
Donāt fall for it. Do something. Vote yes on Measure 26-201.