Amazon seeks furtherance of the climate crisis

Amazon, a genuinely evil corporation we need to renew our pledge to boycott, is attempting to promote gas usage at its facilities in Eastern Oregon by claiming that oxidizing natural gas (methane) is not combustion so is exempt from the Climate Protection Program.  This claim underscores Amazon’s commitment to promoting wildfires in Oregon and seeking an end to the livability of our fragile planet for much of the current biodiversity it supports (including humanity).

Please find below testimony submitted on behalf of SOCAN to support the state DEQ in its attempt to modify the CPP language to avert Amazon’s  evil effort.

Director Whitman, Manager McConnaha:

I write as cofacilitator of Southern Oregon Climate Action Now, an organization of over 2000 rural Southern Oregonians and friends who are concerned about the climate crisis and support action to address this existential crisis. Following years of resistance to meaningful action among Republicans in the state legislature, thanks to Governor Brown’s Executive Order 20-04, state agencies were charged with developing programs within their authority to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the state. One of the most important such programs is the Climate Protection Program developed by the Department of Environmental Quality following input from stakeholders- including representatives of fossil gas corporations.

We at SOCAN were very involved in the Rulemaking Advisory Committee hearings that contributed to the development of this program. Throughout this process we were disappointed by the ongoing resistance to developing a program that would allow Oregon to contribute to the global effort to address the climate crisis, especially the opposition to rational programs offered by the fossil fuel industry and many corporations.

Now, it appears, the opponents of climate action, those very industries that have contributed to the failure of the voluntary program resulting from the 2007 legislation to achieve its goals, are undertaking whatever steps they can to thwart the well-intentioned efforts of Oregon’s DEQ to address this problem. The legal action they promulgated was the first evidence of this resistance. Efforts to take advantage of perceived loopholes in the program is the second.

I write at this time to express first our disgust at efforts by Amazon to exploit an apparent loophole in the legislation and, second, to express support for DEQ in their effort to adopt language that would close this loophole.

What we are witnessing is corporations in Oregon acting to promote the climate crisis and thus promote wildfires in Oregon and hasten the arrival of a climate that will render our planet uninhabitable by the diversity of organisms, including humans, that currently occupy its fragile biosphere.

I write to urge DEQ to take all steps necessary to block the inhuman and inhumane effort of Amazon to by-pass the Climate Protection Program rules. Rural Oregon, on the frontlines of the climate threat strongly supports Governor Brown and the agencies in their effort to avert the ongoing climate crisis.

Respectfully submitted

Alan R.P. Journet Ph.D.
Cofacilitator Southern Oregon Climate Action Now