Oregon

Since 2018, the Climate Advocacy Lab has distributed Climate Justice Microgrants to 25 environmental justice and climate justice organizations around the United States who are doing powerful work to protect and improve their communities.

Try to combat the public’s fatalism about climate change. In this survey, two-thirds of Oregon residents are pessimistic about the chances of solving climate change in time. But most support government and individuals doing a lot more. 80 percent of respondents favor regulations that promote tree planting and prioritize renewable energy, and three-quarters feel that residents, as a matter or personal responsibility, should take steps to reduce their carbon footprints.

73% of initially planned oil, gas, and coal export projects in the region have been cancelled since 2012. Fossil fuel executives from dozens of companies once seemed to be salivating over the idea of exporting massive quantities of gas, oil, and coal from the Cascadia coast—but local communities, Tribes, environmentalists, and local governments rejected calls to turn Cascadia into a fossil fuel export terminal. They protested projects’ abrogation of Indigenous sovereignty, the risk of oil spills and damage to sensitive ecosystems, the pollution spewing from coal trains, the climate harms of extracting, transporting, and burning hydrocarbons, and the safety hazards of transporting flammable fuels through populated areas—and for the most part, they’ve won. Since 2012, fossil fuel interests have schemed more than 50 large projects to export coal, oil, gas, or their derivatives from Cascadia’s coast in British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington, and today, 40 of those—a whopping 73%—have been canceled by project backers who faced local opposition, see-sawing energy prices, and regulatory hurdles.