In his Sunday piece, Oregonian columnist Steve Duin calls out our state’s sole GOP congressman, Greg Walden, for his predatory and unproductive push to make timber industry hay out of the devastating Eagle Creek fire that ripped through the Columbia River Gorge last month. While the fires were still smouldering, it turns out, Walden was busy putting forward legislation that would expedite salvage logging operations, smother environmental reviews, and severely limit public input following natural disasters not just in the Gorge, but in any National Scenic Area.
It is one thing for Representative Walden to ill serve the citizens of his own district; they deserve better, but they are also the ones who have chosen to elect him, repeatedly. But Oregonians have already seen him play an outsize role in attempts to dismantle Obamacare — a cynical unwinding that would not only disproportionately hit Walden's own district, but severely affect the health care and finances of the state at large, not to mention cause wholly preventable suffering to millions of Americans nationwide. And now, following a man-made fire that has turned to ash some of the Portland area’s most beautiful forests, he is backing a plan that puts timber industry greed ahead of both the entire states’s interest, not to mention scientific good sense.
Some have urged hope in the aftermath of the Eagle Creek fire, arguing that the forest will inevitably fully recover — if not necessarily in our lifetimes. But when politicians like Greg Walden hurry to take advantage of disaster, and prioritize rewarding their donors over letting the land regenerate for future generations, it’s easy to see how exploitative politics, greed, and climate change might combine to result in a permanently diminished state of nature in Oregon. Now is the time to summon the political will to make such a dystopian possibility unthinkable. We can’t risk losing forever what we’ve already lost for the foreseeable future. Concerned citizens and politicians need to speak out against Walden's gambit, including Democratic politicians who Duin rightly calls out for ducking the issue for fear of crossing the timber industry.
And progressives need to serve notice to Walden that these legislative efforts that would diminish us all have now legitimized a statewide effort to replace him with a better advocate for our state in the next election.
