Oregon should protect its environment without sacrificing its future.
A healthy environment and a flourishing economy are not competing goals. Good policy can advance both.
Oregon’s natural resources are among its greatest strengths. Our forests, rivers, farmland, energy resources, and open spaces enrich our lives and support communities and livelihoods across the state.
Protecting them matters.
But environmental policy should be judged by the results it produces, not by the intentions behind it or the burdens government imposes. Too often, Oregon leaders pursue costly mandates, restrictions, and symbolic policies that make life more expensive while delivering little measurable environmental benefit.
Cascade Policy Institute offers a different approach: responsible stewardship built on human ingenuity, sound science, economic freedom, and respect for property rights.
We believe people are not the enemy of the environment. People solve problems. Innovation creates cleaner technologies. Prosperity gives communities the resources to protect what they value. And responsible management can make Oregon’s natural resources healthier, safer, and more productive.
What Cascade believes
- Results matter more than intentions. Environmental policies should be measured by the benefits they actually produce, not by how ambitious they sound or how much they cost.
- Human ingenuity is a resource. Innovation, technology, and economic growth can solve environmental challenges more effectively than mandates designed to restrict choices and force behavior change.
- Property rights encourage stewardship. People take better care of resources when ownership is respected and those closest to the land have a meaningful stake in its future.
- Oregon’s forests need active management. Responsible thinning, timber harvesting, and forest management can improve forest health and reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire.
- Environmental policy should recognize tradeoffs. Regulations that raise the cost of energy, transportation, housing, or doing business should be judged honestly against the environmental benefits they actually deliver.
What better policy looks like
Better environmental policy produces measurable results while allowing Oregon families, businesses, and communities to prosper.
It means healthier forests and a lower risk of catastrophic wildfire. It means encouraging cleaner technologies through innovation rather than political mandates. It means managing natural resources responsibly instead of allowing neglect, bureaucracy, or ideology to make environmental problems worse.
And it means recognizing that a prosperous society is better equipped to protect its environment than one made poorer by policies that impose enormous costs for little benefit.
Oregon does not have to choose between protecting the environment and building a stronger economy. We should demand policies that do both.
