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Locus Focus
432 Episodes
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Multnomah County's Office of Sustainability has been working on a Climate
Justice Plan for the past several months. The plan is a shared vision and
roadmap for climate justice for Multnomah County, co-created by community
members and local government staff. Over the past...
Advocates recently secured a significant victory in the ongoing fight
against Zenith Energy. Last month, the Court of Appeals ruled that the Land
Use Compatibility Statement (LUCS) issued by the City of Portland,
which included a series of conditions applicable to Zenith...
This Program aired originally on October 27, 2025
A high tech type of noxious weed is spreading across Oregon. For several
years data centers have been popping up across the state, destroying
farmland and habitat. Enticed by abundant water and energy and tax breaks
f...
As we tumble toward autocracy, we still don’t know exactly what’s in
store, yet it has become clear what we should fear, and that we need to
muster a movement that will stand up to everything hurtling toward us. But on
today’s Locus Focus, I want to go back in time and t...
It is heartening that over 7 million people participated in the last No Kings
demonstrations and that they are happening in countless places across the
country, in red and blue communities, rural, suburban and urban. But after
the exhilaration of these marches and rallie...
Francisco Aguirre is an influential leader in the immigrant rights and labor
movements. A long-time Portland resident, he fled El Salvador to escape the
military's extreme violence against him and his family. In 2014, ICE agents
came to Francisco’s home and tried to arre...
The landscape of Washington County has been transformed from one of the most
productive agricultural regions in the world into a maze of gargantuan data
centers. On this episode of Locus Focus we continue the tale of how this high
tech noxious weed is spreading across th...
A high tech type of noxious weed is spreading across Oregon. For several
years data centers have been popping up across the state, destroying
farmland and habitat. Enticed by abundant water and energy and tax breaks
from cash strapped local communities, high tech compani...
A glaring unspoken dynamic orbits around the myth of carbon pricing as an
economically effective means to address climate change. The assumption that
carbon pricing works to avoid catastrophic climate chaos takes on a mythical
quality, even as the data and science show t...
The fossil gas industry knows that it's being driven out of business because
there are so many actual clean alternatives now to what the industry has
deceptively dubbed "natural" gas. But instead of gracefully going away or
transitioning to fill another niche in our ener...
Until recently very few Portlanders spoke about, let along fretted over the
Critical Energy Infrastructure (CEI) Hub along the North Reach of the
Willamette River. But in the last couple years it has become more of a public
concern because of the inherent danger of stori...
For decades the six mile long tank farm along the north reach of the
Willamette River, known as the Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub (CEI hub),
has lurked with its toxic stew of liquid fossil fuels and chemicals,
seemingly unnoticed by most Portlanders. Except for its ...
"Hope dies last" is a concept popularized by Jessie de la Cruz, a
farmworker activist with the United Farm Workers. It refers to the enduring
human spirit and capacity for resilience, envisioning creative solutions and
persisting even when facing dire circumstances like ...
This program first aired on March 31, 2025
Northwest Natural Gas's Smart Energy program advertises itself as a way for
customers to “offset” their natural gas emissions by funding projects
that the company says “reduce, or prevent the release of, greenhouse
gases.” But ...
Floodplains are our watershed's natural buffer from the impacts of flooding
as they absorb and filter water. But when floodplains are developed, we
permanently lose those ecosystem benefits. In Oregon, many of our floodplains
are developed for industrialized uses, which ...
This program aired originally on December 23, 2024
As we transition to a truly renewable world two of the things we need less of
are more and larger server farms and nuclear power reactors to feed them
electricity. Yet that is the plan being hatched by Microsoft, Amazo...
This program aired originally on May 12, 2025
While many of us are worrying about how the melting polar ice caps are a
warning of climate catastrophes ahead, for others melting ice is turning
historical dreams of a navigable Arctic into reality and reshaping rivalries ...
This program aired originally on January 27, 2025
As we confront the existential crisis of climate chaos there are two paths we
can take. We can make dramatic changes that meaningfully reduce carbon
emissions. Or we can accept the fossil fuel industry’s self-serving cl...
This program aired originally on June 2, 2025
In these disturbing times as we watch democracy crumble and wonder whom the
oligarchs will go after next, how do we ground ourselves in the work we need
to keep doing? First they come for the immigrants, then international ...
This program aired originally on October 7, 2024
Unpredictable and destructive weather events dramatically illustrate how
climate chaos is impacting us right now. Yet while there are real solutions
that will enable us to stop emitting greenhouse gases, the fossil fuel ...
























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