My comment on the city’s Clean Air, Healthy Climate Proposals

Dear City of Portland,

I live in North Portland and according to city maps, I am surrounded on both sides of the peninsula by heavy industrial polluters. These industrial sites are mixed in closely with dense housing. On top of that, I live near Lombard Street and the constant vehicle exhaust from diesel and poorly maintained gasoline engines. Diesel defeat devices and large fuel-guzzling trucks and SUVs are rampant in my neighborhood. I also endured the wildfire smoke of fall 2020.

I check current air quality daily at IQAir.com. On many days this year and last, I have limited my outdoor activities because of the bad Portland air. I am fortunate to be a healthy adult. But I would never raise a child in this city for fear of developmental problems, childhood cancer, and asthma.

I believe the current air quality standards are already too lenient, and we will look back decades from now and wonder why we traded respiratory health and got nothing in return.

I think immediate action on every source of air pollution is needed in Portland.

Healthy climate fee:

$25 per ton of GHG is completely reasonable for this huge amount of emissions. In fact, treating the air we breathe as an open sewer should be much more expensive for polluters. What if it cost only $25 to dump a ton of liquid waste into the Willamette River? Please move forward with this fee.

Clean Air Protection Fee:

I believe this would help to reduce local substantial hazardous air pollution.

I believe much current air pollution occurs because there is very little cost to it. The costs of air pollution are externalized, and it is considered acceptable to treat the air above us as an open sewer. In addition, fuel is cheap. This is why you see vast fields of idling rail cars, idling construction machinery, and inefficient building practices. By putting a greater cost on pollution, behavior will change without much of an economic impact. Fees such as this are straightforward and they serve to organize many smaller decisions to reduce the overall amount of air pollution.

Please move forward with the proposed fees, and consider raising them further.

Thank you for reading my comment and prioritizing environmental and human health,
Mr P.P. Poopenfarten III

Comment at https://www.portland.gov/bps/climate-action/healthy-climate by 08 Jan 2021. See the excellent work being done by Neighbors for Clean Air.