Here are the comments of my friend for Oregon:

It is time that the Majority Power in session consider what is good for all of Oregon, which is mostly a rural state made up of ranchers, farmers, timber industry, fishing industry, and other small businesses that depend heavily on fossil fuels, rather than just the dense population of liberal voters in the Willamette valley that drive a Toyota Prius or a Nissan Leaf, and want to force everyone else to do the same, or worse...

Eleven of the senators in Oregon were unavailable for the scheduled vote for the very controversial cap and trade bill yesterday, so Governor Brown sent the Oregon State Police out to find them. The Republican Senators have been unsuccessful in getting HB2020 to be something that anyone except the ultra-right are going to find acceptable, and they wanted to drop the emergency status which means it gets deployed immediately after vote, rather than 90-days after the vote. They were also looking get more input from the voting constituencies throughout Oregon that will be impacted by this bill, but the Majority party wanted none of that, and wants to ramrod this bill through ASAP, and get the incremental revenue to the State started ASAP.

Oregon State Police can force any senators they track down "in Oregon" into a patrol car to return to the Senate floor under arrest... Within the Senate the Democrats have an 18 to 12 majority in the chamber, but need 20 members present on the floor (even if in handcuffs) for a quorum, otherwise without a quorum a vote cannot happen.

The bill in question aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. New York just passed a similarly ambitious climate change bill, one that aims to get the state’s economy to 85 percent emissions reduction below 1990 levels by 2030.

Cap-and-trade works by making polluters pay for every ton of carbon that they plan to emit, a cost that gradually increases over time, with the goal of getting companies to switch over to greener tech rather than paying to emit. Don't get confused, you will be paying a penalty for purchasing fossil fuels, as a way to increase revenue to the State in the short-term, and to reduce usage overall in the longer term.

The initial funding of the bill will be by paying a polluters tax per gallon for every gallon of fuel that you utilize. In year one, that roughly translates to gas price increases ranging from somewhere between 19 cents to 72 cents a gallon. By 2030, it’s forecast between 36 cents and $1.45 per gallon. And by 2050, when the policy reaches full effect, per gallon prices could rise between $1.51 and $5.64. My guess is that we will be on the higher end of that range estimate, simply because the State of Oregon has a huge appetite for new revenue sources, and this is one very large source that isn't promised to anything specifically yet...

Remember that this is a no-pain-no-gain reality at the heart of the “market-based” cap and trade policy. If businesses and consumers don’t feel it in their wallets, they won’t change their behavior and reduce emissions, and if the legislature doesn't meet there carbon emissions goals, they will simply continue to raise the fees on fuel, until we as consumers "feel the pain" and are forced to reduce our emissions...

It’s also true that the price impact would fall heaviest on rural residents. That’s because they travel longer distances, drive vehicles that are less fuel efficient and have fewer public transit options. They also have lower incomes, on average.

Likewise, truckers and businesses that rely on heavy vehicles will be hard hit, and that cost could easily show up in higher prices at the grocery store, etc. – cost impacts that would also likely be higher in rural areas of the state.

“The bill makes the urban-rural divide stronger than ever because the biggest polluters are in Oregon’s large cities,” said Senate Republican Leader Herman Baertschiger, Jr., R-Grants Pass. “It is fundamentally inequitable to put the responsibility of cleaning up their pollution on the backs of the Rural Oregonians.”

House Bill 2020 envisions a wholesale reduction in Oregonians’ use of fossil fuels with the goal – by the year 2050 -- to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent less than what Oregonians logged in 1990.

To get there, Oregon’s policy would require utility, transportation and industrial companies to, in essence, buy the right to pollute. They will purchase so-called emission allowances in a state-run auction or on a secondary market to cover each metric ton of pollution they emit. As the state reduces the supply of allowances, they would get more expensive, increasing fossil fuel prices and providing an incentive for industries and consumers to reduce their consumption -- and related emissions.

What should be interesting is watching the citizens of Oregon suffer economically under this bill, while the adjacent states have no such laws. Expect to see the state police monitoring gas stations on border towns in Idaho and Washington, as Rural Oregon residents seek to purchase there fuel "tax free" outside the state in large quantities, and we will see how Governor Brown will attempt to stop that...