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Author’s note: Some folks in the Oregon legislature have been fretting about falsehoods lately. I wrote this up to help inform a hearing on climate bills in Salem on April 14th. Oregonians are already paying for climate change, through damaged shellfish, lost snowpack, and increased wildfires. Climate models predict that, without urgent action, the Oregon drought could morph into something like the California mega-drought. It’s time to act. Don’t let...

Serena It’s never too early to look forward to the 2016 elections (grooooaaaan), but as the media rev up for candidate coverage, NYU journalism prof Jay Rosen offers some thoughtful strategies for writing about climate-denier candidates. A stunning new project, Humans for Humans, from Canadian homeless advocacy group Raising the Roof, features short videos of people experiencing homelessness reading so-called “mean tweets” about the homeless. They respond to some of them,...

March 22 marked the first anniversary of the landslide in Oso, Washington. A water-logged mountain slope gave way, unleashing staggering volumes of earth and debris that swept across a small community and killed 43 people. Oso was an awful lesson in the destructive power of slides. It’s a lesson that bears special consideration as the Northwest considers proposals to add dozens of hazardous coal and oil trains to coastal rail...

What if we could click our ruby slippers and transport ourselves to a magical place where polluters pay and we all get checks in the mail? The Oregon legislature is considering two bills that would take us there. When designing a program to make climate polluters pay, one of the most important decisions is what to do with the money. Northeast states and California invest in energy efficiency and transportation....

First Wyoming, now Washington: the state Senate has endorsed an $85 million handout to the coal industry, in the form of a rail project whose sole identifiable beneficiary is the proposed and highly controversial Millennium Bulk Terminals coal export project in Longview, Washington. The rail crossing project, innocuously labeled in the legislative record as the “SR 432 Longview Grade Crossing,” would build a massive vehicle overpass over a rail line near the banks of the...

Take a look: coal exports through the Ridley terminal in northern British Columbia are in freefall. The curious thing is that just a few years back, Ridley was so confident about its prospects that it undertook an ambitious plan to boost its throughput capacity from 12 million tons per year all the way up to 24 million tons. At the time, the plan seemed reasonable: Asian demand seemed strong, and at...

The Kitsap Sun is reporting that a $1 per car toll increase on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge west of Tacoma, Washington is “close to a done deal.” On July 1, rates will rise to $5 for Good To Go! electronic payment, $6 at the toll booths and $7 for pay-by-mail. A déjà vu will occur one year later. WSDOT believes that if tolls on the bridge don’t rise, there’s a...

Eric Seattle city councilmember Mike O’Brien goes on MSNBC to talk about the Port’s huge mistake in agreeing to host Shell’s Arctic drilling fleet. It’s fun to watch O’Brien on the stump for the Thin Green Line: the place that just says no to climate destruction. At Rolling Stone, Tim Dickinson has an excellent, must-read, first-rate—it’s that good—piece on what Keystone XLs looming failure means for Canada and the conservative...

If you’re on Facebook or have spent any time somewhere within a half-mile radius of a progressive-minded Catholic lately, you’ll know that The Super Pope (a.k.a. Pope Francis) has been outspoken about the fact that humans are causing global warming and his belief that Christians have a duty rooted in “ancient biblical teaching” to curb climate change. He is also expected to issue a papal encyclical on global warming this...

When my husband Jason and I planned a trip to Vancouver, BC, we decided to bring our family’s bikes just in case. With our eight-year-old son Orion in tow, I wasn’t sure we’d have the chance to ride unless we sought out an off-street trail. To my surprise, we were able to ride—and not just on trails we had to drive or take a bus to, but through the heart...