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 ...
Francisco
why can't I download this?