SW Corridor Project: A Net Negative for the Environment
By John A. Charles, Jr.
Portland politicians claim to be concerned about carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. That’s why so many of them support TriMet’s proposed 12-mile light rail line from Portland to Bridgeport Village near Tigard. They think it will reduce fossil fuel use.
Their assumptions are wrong.
According to the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the project, energy used during construction of the rail project will equal 5.9 trillion Btu. Much of this will be in the form of fossil fuels needed to power the heavy equipment. Additional energy will be used to manufacture the rail cars, tracks, and overhead wires.
The EIS claims that the negative environmental consequences of construction will be made up by energy saved from operations of the train. However, the operational savings are so small it would take 61 years to mitigate the carbon dioxide emissions of construction.
2035 Daily Vehicle Miles Traveled and Energy Consumption
| Vehicle Type | Daily VMT – No build option | Million Btu/Day – No build option | Daily VMT
With Light Rail |
Million Btu/Day
With Light Rail |
| Passenger vehicle | 51,474,286 | 249,084 | 51,415,071 | 248,798 |
| Heavy-duty trucks | 3,389,982 | 73,132 | 3,389,288 | 73,117 |
| Transit bus | 100,122 | 3,546 | 97,501 | 3,453 |
| Light rail | 19,189 | 1,247 | 21,200 | 1,377 |
| TOTAL | 54,983,579 | 327,009 | 54,923,060 | 326,745 |
Source: Draft EIS, SW Corridor Project
Unfortunately, all of the light rail cars will need to be replaced before then. Building new cars will require more energy, resulting in additional CO2 emissions and a longer payback period.
Light rail is not a solution to a perceived climate change problem; it IS a climate change problem. Any further planning for the SW Corridor project should be terminated.
John A. Charles, Jr. is President and CEO of Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.
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Carbon Regulation: Another Legislative Circus
By John A. Charles, Jr.
According to the state’s Global Warming Commission, Oregon has already met its goal of reducing per-capita carbon dioxide emissions to levels that are 20% below 1990 emissions by the year 2020. In fact, we met the goal four years ago.
Are state legislators celebrating this achievement? Not at all. They are too busy rolling out a 98-page bill that will establish a statewide limit on carbon dioxide emissions, designed to make energy more expensive. The bill also repeals the CO2 goal that we’ve already met and imposes a more stringent one: to reduce emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by the year 2050.
Why change the goal? Because proponents of the bill don’t care about results. They always want aggressive sounding goals with distant timelines, in order to give themselves bragging rights about how visionary Oregon is in restricting the use of fossil fuels.
Most of the costs are backloaded to occur after 2030, when electric utilities will be forced to buy a shrinking number of carbon dioxide allowances. At that point, electricity bills will start going up. But you won’t be able to blame politicians, because most of the legislators voting for the bill this year will be out of office by then. That’s how it always works.
We’ve already met the state goal for CO2 reduction. Legislators should leave us alone.
John A. Charles, Jr. is President and CEO of Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.
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Climate Change Alarmists Can’t Get Their Story Straight
By John A. Charles, Jr.
Relying on computer models to predict the future has always been risky. Now we know it’s the basis of climate change securities fraud as well.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) recently wrote the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that several California cities have claimed in lawsuits against oil and gas companies that those companies failed to disclose known climate risks associated with fossil fuel use. Yet those same cities have made bond offerings in which they tell potential investors that it is impossible to predict future risks of climate change.
For example, San Francisco predicts in its lawsuit against the oil industry that it will be subjected to as much as 0.8 feet of additional sea level rise by 2030, with short-term costs of $500 million and long-term costs of $5 billion. Yet the City tells potential bond investors, “The City is unable to predict whether seal-level rise will occur.”
The County of Santa Cruz claims in its fossil fuel lawsuit that there is “a 98% chance that the County experiences a devastating three-foot flood before the year 2050.” Meanwhile, in efforts to sell its own municipal bonds, the County reassures investors that it is unable to predict such floods.
This confirms what has long been suspected: Climate change alarmists just make stuff up to scare the public.
John A. Charles, Jr. is President and CEO of Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.
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