Portland, OR. — March 27, 2025 — In its second major report, the Forum on Oregon Climate Change Economics (FORCE) has concluded that Oregon is ill-prepared for the costs of adapting to climate change but can begin to collect the needed funding through surcharges on the most significant sources of greenhouse gas pollution.

The report, entitled “Climate Change Adaptation in Oregon: What will it cost and who will pay?,” was authored by FORCE member John Talberth, PhD, and Richard Mietz, Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for Sustainable Economy (CSE) with support from other members of the FORCE team at University of Oregon, Reed College, and Natural Resource Economics. 

According to Dr. Talberth, “With the Trump Administration pulling out of all climate change related programs, it is imperative that states fill the void and take the lead on planning and financing climate adaptation projects that will save lives, property, and natural ecosystems from the worst effects of climate change. This report lists some of the big-ticket items identified by prior federal, state and local public agencies and demonstrates how surcharges on the greenhouse gas emissions from oil, gas, coal and industrial timber can fund the necessary adaptation to climate change.”

The report warns, however, that climate adaptation planning has slowed down significantly and little to no work has been done to estimate the financial costs of what will be needed. Most of the work completed to date has been in response to former Oregon Governor Kate Brown’s Executive Order 20-04 and President Biden’s Executive Order 14008. After complying with initial climate adaptation planning requirements, very little additional work has been done and it remains unclear what projects will be needed sooner rather than later, how much they will cost, and who will pay for them.

According to Richard Mietz, “We pored over dozens of climate action and climate adaptation documents from public agencies. While it’s encouraging to see all the great work that has been done, it’s disheartening to see any and all funding for this commonsense climate work being gutted by the Trump Administration. With no further advance planning – including thinking about what will it cost and who should pay for it– Oregon taxpayers will be forced to shoulder all of the costs associated with heat deaths, collapsing highways, wildfires, water shortages and lost fisheries.”  In its first report, the FORCE team found that climate change is already responsible for frequent, multi-billion dollar disasters.

After reviewing the status of climate adaptation planning at the federal, state and local levels, the report modeled the amount of money that would need to be collected by an annual surcharge in order to have the requisite money to pay for five urgent climate adaptation measures by 2050. These include: 

• Comprehensive cooling investments identified by the Oregon Department of Energy applicable to all residential structures (60,000) currently lacking adequate technology, mainly heat pumps and air conditioners.
• Retrofit of all high to extreme risk highway corridors studied by ODOT in Oregon’s Coast Range.
• Carbon payments adequate to halt clearcutting on roughly 148,000 acres of private forestland for 20 years in order to restore forest cover and make landscapes near rural communities more resilient to wildfires and water shortages.
• Acquisition of forestland, farmland, and floodplain properties to mitigate climate damages and replace habitat that will be lost to climate change.
• A significant increase in deployment of microgrid systems as backups for basic services, schools, and emergency operations.