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Dugger Was Inaccurate by Chris Norden Lewiston Tribune, October 13, 2019

I hoped to devote this letter to thanking Lewiston Tribune photographer Barry Kough for the decades he has devoted to blessing readers with some of the most beautiful and philosophical images of our region I have ever seen in any artistic medium. Instead, I'm obliged to respond to a factual inaccuracy in Marvin Dugger's peculiar letter condemning attempts to inform the public about the causes and likely consequences of runaway climate change as tantamount to child abuse.

To the contrary: doing nothing and remaining in denial about the problem and its causes is far closer to child abuse, sacrificing the future of younger generations either for continued financial gain or out of sheer irrational spite. ...

The factual inaccuracy ... is Dugger's claim that an extracurricular (non-required) community-focused panel I organized in 2015 at Lewis-Clark State College to provide a forum for arguments in favor of breaching the four lower Snake River dams concluded with me stating that a forum presenting arguments in favor of maintaining the current dams and commercial barging system "would not be happening."

The broader claim was that I was a "radical environmentalist" committed to actively suppressing that perspective.

In fact, the event began with my providing attendees with a set of online resources to help them understand a broad variety of perspectives on the issue. ...

The panel also included two Nez Perce tribal members, for whom loss of this resource is also cultural, meaning significant in more than simply monetary or recreational terms. ...