Oregon Rep.-elect Cliff Bentz, who led statehouse walkout, backs climate solutions people 'want to do'

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WASHINGTON - A year-and-a-half ago, Oregon Rep.-elect Cliff Bentz was on the lam. 

He wasn't dodging the Oregon State Police because he'd broken any law. Instead, Bentz and his fellow GOP state senators had fled the state to withhold quorum from Democrats in the legislature who were poised to pass a cap-and-trade bill that Republicans believed would harm the state. The police had been sent to return the senators back to the state capitol so a vote on the bill could occur. 

"We do our jobs best when we represent our constituents best. And that means doing everything in our power to keep them from being irreparably damaged which this bill will do," Bentz said on Fox News at the time. They were eventually successful in killing the bill. 

But despite the dramatic fashion in which Bentz and his fellow legislators blocked cap-and-trade in Oregon, he makes clear he thinks climate issues need to be addressed. In fact, he represents a district that's been hit particularly hard by wildfires and water constraints.

Oregon Congressman-elect Cliff Bentz, a Republican, told Fox News that he believes climate change needs to be addressed, just not through "a top-down autocratic" system like the "Green New Deal" or cap-and-trade. (Cliff Bentz)

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Bentz just doesn't think those solutions should come from big government or a "Green New Deal," but from innovation in the private sector that leads people to willingly cut their carbon emissions. 

"If you go in and look at what type of drills and saws and other things people are using now, they're battery-driven. Why? Because they're so convenient," Bentz said in an interview with Fox News.

"You don't have to be dragging a cord around wherever you go... suddenly you don't have to fool around with gasoline or trying to get the thing to start," he continued. "Well, the same is true of electric cars. And that's why Tesla is doing so well. And so what we really need to be doing is finding solutions to these problems that people are enthusiastic about."

He added: "The challenge is to find things that people want to do as opposed to saying to people, 'This is how you are going to do it.'."

Cap-and-trade is a system in which the government sells a fixed number of permits for companies to emit carbon into the atmosphere. It's aimed at cutting greenhouse gases but has been staunchly opposed by those on the political right. Bentz elaborated in an interview with Fox News last week, calling cap-and-trade "a top-down autocratic, central control, command-type system" that is "not consistent with how I think we should be running the state of Oregon or the country."

"Cap-and-trade as a device adopted by a single state puts that state in enormous disadvantage when it comes to your economy and your ability to compete with other states," he said. "In addition, once you start down the cap-and-trade path, you can't get off. You're stuck. And so I did not see it as the proper answer to outcomes that they were trying to achieve."

Truckers and other blue collar workers gather in Salem, Ore., in the summer of 2019 to protest HB2020, a cap and trade bill sponsored by state Democrats. Congressman-elect Cliff Bentz, R-Ore., was one of the GOP state senators who fled the state to block the bill's passage. (Twitter/ @WaltLovegren)

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Bentz said that "I'm not a climate denier" and added that a significant majority of the people in his district agree "we need to do something about the climate."

"But well over 70% don't want to pay anything when it comes to addressing those issues," Bentz said. "They want the issues addressed in a way that's far more clever than simply saying you're going to pay more for fuel and we're going to do away with diesel."

What are those "clever" solutions, according to Bentz?

"More innovation, more sequestration, more adaptation," he said, "There's not one magic solution to this issue. There's not one. There's many of them."

Bentz praised President Trump for implementing tax credits storing liquified carbon dioxide (CO2) below ground, a practice called "sequestration."

The congressman-elect, whose district also includes a robust logging industry, added that proper forest management will be key to fighting climate change because "forests and trees are super good at ... removing CO2 from the air."

Protesters flood the steps of the Oregon State Capitol Tuesday, June 25, 2019, to push back against a Republican walkout over a climate change bill that has entered its sixth day in Salem, Ore. (AP Photo/Sarah Zimmerman) (AP)

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But, Bentz said, even with all of that action, people need to understand that climate change cannot be stopped in its tracks. 

"Adaptation is slightly different because what you're doing is basically acknowledging that this problem is 30 to 40 years away from being solved if we stopped all CO2 production tomorrow," he said. "And so you've got to figure out some way to adapt to a hotter, dryer climate. And that's why I focused on infrastructure and water and water conservation."

Innovation is what Bentz said would be the eventual "answer" to climate change. Specifically, he mentioned an Oregon State University program working on small-scale nuclear power plants. He said to address climate change on a global scale -- other countries like China pollute more than the U.S. -- it's important to have reliable clean alternatives like nuclear power. 

"If you're going to address this issue at that level on a grand scale, you better have an alternative because people want power," he said. 

"If you look at all the solutions we have now, we don't have all the answers yet," Bentz said of the need for innovation. "And so appropriately funding our universities and others to figure out solutions is truly important."

What Bentz cannot support, however, is the "Green New Deal" pushed by many Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

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"The Green New Deal includes a top-down approach to income inequality and so if you look at it carefully, you'll see that it's an excuse to change, switch out of the capitalistic system and to one that's far more directed towards socialism and top-down control," he said. "And I think that's why we Republicans did so well in this most recent election cycle, is because people don't want socialism."

Bentz, whose district includes a significant amount of public lands managed by either the Bureau of Land Management or the U.S. Forest Service, said he would like to be on the Natural Resources Committee, where he would have a say over legislation that affects those departments. He also said that his district, one of the largest in the country, has a vast network of roads, pipelines, dams and more that could be aided if he were on the Transportation Committee. 

Before serving as a state senator starting in 2018, Bentz was a member of the Oregon House of Representatives for 10 years. He also previously served as the chair of the Oregon Water Resources Commission. He is also an attorney with expertise in tax law.