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QMS logging project will undermine Willamette National Forest recreation

By Nadene LeCheminant
Member of 350 Salem OR 
Reprinted from the Salem Statesman Journal, December 24, 2021

I moved to Oregon 16 years ago, drawn by its physical beauty. The Cascade Mountains are the primary reason I chose to live in Salem.

I was dismayed to learn about the proposed Quartzville-Middle Santiam logging project being planned in the Willamette National Forest. This massive project covers a staggering 89,000 acres between Detroit and Sweet Home.

It is uncomfortably close to a protected wilderness area and would convert some of the most scenic locations in the Oregon Cascades into barren slopes scarred by skid trails, logging slash, exposed stumps, bulldozed roads and a moonscape ambience.

I am not opposed to all aspects of the QMS project, such as thinning some dense stands of younger trees. What is disturbing is the immense scale of the project and especially its inclusion of mature and old-growth trees.

Old-growth trees once covered the entire Cascade and Coast Range. Today less than 10% remain, and the Quartzville-Middle Santiam project has some of those rare stands in its sights.

Many Oregon residents have chosen to live here because of the state’s exceptional scenic and recreational values, and millions of tourists are drawn here for the same reason.

Indeed, these values are a primary driver of the Oregon economy, which is shifting from extraction-based sectors, such as timber, to the recreation sector. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, outdoor recreation in Oregon adds $5.3 billion to the economy and provides almost 70,000 jobs, giving it greater economic importance than timber production.https://e9e4b0e2fa574773dde41f2fc665d798.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

The Willamette National Forest, in particular, receives hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, including campers, hikers, mountain bikers, trail runners, picnickers, hunters, anglers, swimmers and horse riders.

If the QMS project goes forward as planned, its impacts on scenery and recreational values will undermine the outdoor experience of these visitors.

Oregon’s future does not lie in continuing to designate our forests as economic sacrifice zones devoted to timber production. Tourism and recreational values are degraded when forests are thinned and clear-cut on the massive scale that is occurring in the Cascade Mountains right now, and especially when mature and old-growth forests are logged.

Our majestic older forests form the iconic heart of the outdoor experience for Oregonians. I urge the Forest Service to choose “Alternative 4,” which eliminates logging in old-growth stands and focuses solely on thinning previously logged, younger forests. This alternative will still produce 50 million to 60 million board feet of timber over the next several years, helping support local economies.

The Willamette National Forest is loved by hundreds of thousands of Oregonians, and they should have a voice in how this forest is managed.

Recreational values will become increasingly important as we move into the future, and those values must be protected in order to protect our economy.

Keep logging out of Silver Falls State Park

September 24, 2021

Ever since the fires raged in Santiam Canyon last September, I dreaded seeing the place. The first time I drove through, I felt utter despair at the loss, not only of homes but of old-growth forests and wildlife habitats and lush riverways.

Many of us will never again, in our lifetimes, see this beloved place as we once knew it. Our consolation was that the fires did little damage in Silver Falls State Park.

And so I felt devastated to hear that Silver Falls is now under threat. Park officials have quietly begun post-fire logging in backcountry areas of the park. Alarmingly, the majority of trees slated for the cut are not unsafe, hazard trees. They are mature, green trees, some with a light burn scar.

Silver Falls is known as the crown jewel of the Oregon State Parks system and draws visitors from across the country. Its backcountry, where chainsaws are now at work, acts as an important spillover area to eliminate crowding on the main canyon trail. The only post-fire logging that should be conducted is that which is absolutely necessary for public safety.

Profits from the logging operation are slated to go toward “forest health programs.” The best forest health program for Silver Falls would be to allow this intact forest to recover from its scars naturally.

Post-fire landscapes are some of the most biodiverse habitats in the West, offering a home to many at-risk species. If these areas of Silver Falls are left to regenerate naturally, the land will see an increase in diversity among birds, wildflowers, fungi and insects such as bees, and will provide improved habitat for small mammals and more forage for deer and elk.

Post-fire logging interrupts these healthy cycles. Numerous studies point to long-term degradation caused by salvage logging after wildfires, including erosion, soil compaction, degraded water quality and outbreaks of invasive species.

Research shows that post-fire logging can also increase the future risk of high-intensity fires. Burned trees left standing provide shade and reduce wind speed—keeping the forest cooler and moister—and downed logs store moisture. “Snag forests” also store more carbon, helping slow climate change. The open canopies that logging operations leave behind lead to drier soils and more heat, the opposite of what forests need in a warming climate.  

Burned forests are a natural and healthy part of ecosystems. Research shows that post-fire logging is an outdated, ecologically destructive practice that exchanges critical habitat, scenic beauty and recreation opportunities for board feet of timber and marginal economic benefits. The Silver Falls operation is clearly just a timber sale masquerading as forest maintenance.

Logging in this iconic park sets a horrific precedent.

 If you love this place and don’t want to see intact forests in its beautiful backcountry carved down to 2 million board feet of timber, contact park officials today (Lisa.Sumption@oregon.gov; Chris.Havel@oregon.gov; Chris.Gilliand@oregon.gov).

Tell them Silver Falls State Park deserves better.

Silver Falls State Park plans 100-acre logging project in burned forest near backcountry trails (Statesman Journal)

A 10-year extension for Covanta is a garbage idea

September 17, 2021

The application from Covanta Inc. to renew its permit to burn our solid waste at its incinerator just north of Salem will be a test of whether Gov. Kate Brown and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality are really serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

In March of last year, Brown ordered all state agencies to “exercise any and all authority and discretion vested in them by law to help facilitate Oregon’s achievement of GHG emissions reduction goals.”

Those goals are to reduce emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 and 45%  below 1990 emissions levels by 2035.

To achieve a 45% emissions reduction in a short 14 years, would it make sense to allow Covanta to emit 160,000 metric tons of CO2 or more per year for the next 10 years? That’s the equivalent of annual emissions from 35,000 automobiles. Of course not.

The Covanta Marion incinerator seemed like a great idea when the first permit was issued in 1988. That happens to also be the year that Dr. James Hansen of NASA first started sounding the alarm about climate change.

But now it’s a terrible idea, and the governor and DEQ need to deny a new 10-year permit. It’s not as if we don’t have better options about where to send our solid waste. We already send all of the waste from West Salem to the state-of-the-art Coffin Butte landfill near Corvallis, which emits far less greenhouse gas than the incinerator.

The DEQ has already been charged by the governor to work with landfills all over the state to further reduce their emissions from organic waste. And landfills don’t emit toxic chemicals like the incinerator does when it burns our solid waste.

We are going to find out more about that later this year when Covanta incinerator’s toxic emissions are fully assessed for the first time under the DEQ’s Cleaner Air Oregon program.

What will it take to do the right thing? After a year of horrific wildfires and ice storms and heat domes and severe drought right here in Oregon, can we not wake up to what we have to do?

The recent United Nations IPCC Report was a “code red for humanity” according to the U.N. secretary general. “The alarm bells are deafening,” he said.

We need to listen. DEQ needs to act. They need to say no to any more emissions from commercial burning of solid waste. 

Covanta Marion garbage incinerator seeks new solid waste permit

Covanta Marion garbage incinerator ends partnership with county

HB 2488-7 addresses equity in land use

April 9, 2021

Oregon’s land-use planning laws were written half a century ago. Since that time, we have gained a greater — and often painful — awareness that many of our land-use decisions assume a sacrifice zone, whether it’s the siting of landfills, heavy industry or incinerators.

Our public decisions are often catastrophic for poor communities and people of color, harming those who can least afford the costs and are least equipped to cope.

Unfortunately, those who have historically assumed the greatest burdens of pollution, environmental risk and decreased property values have traditionally been left out of land-use decisions. Planning commissions lack representation from all Oregonians. This has meant that tribal communities, Black, Latinx and other people of color and low-income rural communities are often invisible victims of land-use planning that doesn’t serve them, while generating profits for others. 

We see this playing out in Marion County. The community of Woodburn, where Latinx families comprise more than half the population, has been subjected to a toxic stew of dangerous chemicals emitted by the Covanta Marion incinerator, including mercury, cadmium, lead and dioxin. Research has shown that these chemicals cause numerous and often severe health problems, and yet more sensible, lower-cost solutions — such as utilizing a nearby landfill — were not adopted, in part, because land-use equity laws to protect citizens didn’t exist. (Incidentally, the Covanta Marion incinerator also emits 2.6 times as many greenhouse gases as the local Coffin Butte landfill.) When disadvantaged people are not invited to the table, structural racism and deep-rooted inequalities are upheld in our land-use laws.

House Bill 2488-7 would address this inequity. The “Equity in Land Use” bill would require equitable and meaningful participation of disadvantaged and historically underserved communities in land-use decisions. Tribal communities would be provided with sufficient notice and meaningful opportunities to provide input on decisions that would impact their lands and cultural resources. Planning language would be updated, words like “minority” would be replaced by descriptive and appropriate definitions of disadvantaged groups. Mapping tools would shine the light on disparate impacts experienced by different communities and enable planners to include environmental justice in state and local land-use comprehensive plans.

This year the pandemic and wildfires laid bare the inequities across our state, demonstrating how our most vulnerable communities suffer the most severe impacts from economic and environmental disruption. We have an opportunity to use this newfound awareness to build back stronger, placing equity and justice at the forefront. 

Please urge your representatives and senators to support House Bill 2488-7. The “Equity in Land Use” bill will bring long-overdue reforms to antiquated planning processes. If Oregon is to meaningfully confront 21st-century challenges presented by environmental racism, we need to revise our unfair land-use laws and adopt a 21st-century planning system that will ensure equity for all Oregonians.

Long overdue update of land use planning needed

March 14, 2021

The Legislature is considering House Bill 2488, the “The Equity and Climate in Land Use” bill. This long overdue and much-needed bill would require state agencies to update land use planning goals to ensure participation and consideration of underserved communities in all their decisions. In addition, the bill would set greenhouse gas reduction targets as relates to land use.

We’re currently working under half-century-old rules, and the results as usual have poor and minority communities getting the pollution with the resultant health impacts and reduced property values, while industry makes their profits.

Whether it’s Cancer Alley in Louisiana, the proposed Jordan Cove fossil fuel export facility in Coos Bay, or our own Covanta Marion incinerator in Brooks, land-use decisions have historically been made at the expense of local people that can’t fight back or have no better options, with no consideration for the climate. 

HB 2488 is a step in a more equitable and clean direction. Please contact your representative and encourage its passage.

Better access to public transportation a must

January 10, 2021

Congratulations to the Salem City Council for setting a goal for Salem to become carbon neutral by 2050 and to get halfway there by 2035.

The city’s “Our Salem” comprehensive plan update, a plan update that will decide how we accommodate 60,000 new residents in the next 25 years, is an opportunity for city leaders to make this goal a reality.

The key factor is transportation. We know from our recent greenhouse gas inventory that driving is responsible for 53% of Salem’s greenhouse gas emissions. And the state is telling us we’ll all need to drive about 20% less than we do today to meet state emissions goals.

Unfortunately, our current growth plans take us in the wrong direction on transportation.

The plans continue business-as-usual, calling for most new housing and jobs to occur in car-dependent clusters near the urban edge. These are neighborhoods in outer parts of west, south and east Salem where “vehicle miles traveled” (VMT) are highest and where alternatives like walking, biking or riding the bus are hardest to provide and least effective.

“Our Salem” can turn this around if it instead calls for building most new housing and jobs in walkable mixed-use neighborhoods and in areas closer to downtown — areas where less driving is needed and where options, like walking to nearby stores or shops, are more feasible.

The good news is that this is doable and, if done right, will not just reduce emissions, but make us and our community better off.

Experience around the country shows that developing more walkable neighborhoods closer-in reduces the need for expensive road expansion projects to accommodate new residents and traffic. And expanding options for walking and cycling makes it easier for all of us to stay active and makes our streets safer and our community more livable. In addition, clustering services and employment centers along major bus routes make it easier for many more of us to use Cherriots to get around.

We have lots of good opportunities to accommodate growth in mixed-use developments in closer-in areas, many that require only minimal changes to zoning. Here are a few:

• Encouraging more housing and employment in downtown Developing mixed-use “main streets” in areas like NE Broadway, State Street and along Edgewater in west Salem.
• Redeveloping commercial areas along busy streets like Lancaster Drive and South Commercial that also serve as major transit routes with housing, small parks and improved connections to the nearby neighborhoods.
• Working with major employers, including the state, Salem Hospital and Willamette University to expand employment on existing campuses.

How and where we accommodate the 60,000 new residents who will move to Salem over the next 25 years is key to meeting our emissions goals in a way that makes our community and all of us who are already here better off.

Now is the time for city officials to shift planning gears, and accelerate efforts to plan for mixed-use development in close-in areas.

West Salem resident Robert Cortright recently retired from the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development where he served as the lead land use and transportation planner for 25 years. You may reach him at 23cort@gmail.com.

Help Make Salem a Cleaner and Healthier Place to Live

December 27, 2020

By Ray Quisenberry (pictured on left)
Member of 350 Salem OR 
Reprinted from the Salem Statesman Journal

In 2018, when a fire tore through Paradise, California and forced my father to flee, the climate crisis became personal. He survived, but 85 others perished.

Fast forward to last Labor Day and the climate issue became personal to all Oregonians. Our air was poisoned, lives lost and homes and livelihoods destroyed. 

Climate change did not ignite these fires, but it set the conditions by drying the plants and the soil, making things much worse. 

We can use science to build resiliency and improve forest management, but if we don’t get our fossil-fuel use down and our carbon sequestration up, everything else will be moot. 

But there is hope. Salem and many other cities and countries have committed to taking up the challenge. The U.S. will soon rejoin the Paris Agreement, which will strengthen under our leadership.

Let’s all help by engaging the city and saying we want to make Salem a cleaner and healthier place to live. Let’s move forward and create a future where we breathe a little easier and our families are safe in their homes. 

Curiosity About Spring Leads to Climate Studies

June 2020

By Kendra Schaber 
Chemeketa Community College Student
Vice President of the Oregon Association of Blind Students
Member of 350 Salem OR

For the longest time, I have been fascinated with the season of spring. I spent years studying aspects of spring: how winter impacts spring, how the timing of patterns in nature affects spring, how the season has changed over time, when spring starts, and when spring ends. I even studied how daffodils are a marker to determine what spring is or is not going to do when it actually arrives. I didn’t know that there was a bigger picture. I didn’t know what was hidden under the surface. I only knew that I was interested in spring, daffodils and science.

While exploring different environmental science fields for potential careers, I took a few classes at Chemeketa Community College and quickly figured out that I didn’t want something that required a lot of math. During my long hunt for science or nature career fields without math, I kept noticing how the seasons changed. I don’t mean, the normal changes that occur as spring transitions to summer. I mean, how springs had gotten colder and wetter, or how winters had gotten warmer and drier. I could accurately predict what was going to happen in the spring by knowing what was happening to the flowers and the weather around Ground Hog Day. I quickly figured out that climate change had to be the cause. I was familiar with the concept of climate change. Climate change had finally showed up in my neighborhood, through the strange, hybrid seasons.

After five years of searching for a career, I stumbled upon a newspaper article that included predictions for the following winter and saw information about a little-known field called phenology. I was blown away. Here was the field that explored how the daffodils determined when spring would be most likely to happen. I had been drawn to phenology for 20 years without knowing it. I was thrilled!

The closest two fields to phenology were meteorology and climatology. I chose climatology because it has a wider scope. I found a transfer degree that hooked up Chemeketa Community College with Oregon State University. With my case worker at the Oregon Commission for the Blind, I figured out where best to start. I connected to a few blind students who were going into climatology and picked their brains about how best to navigate college, particularly with filling in visual gaps.

I also hunted for local climate and environmental organizations. Around Earth Day 2018, there was an event at Chemeketa Community College with a number of environmental organizations. My favorite was the Salem chapter of 350.org because they actually listened to my needs and supported me in my efforts. They are the most active environmental group locally. Whenever I can, around my college schedule, I do activities and attend meetings with 350 Salem OR.

While exploring environmental organizations, I was also setting up my college path and updating my technology. When the first day of term finally arrived, my first class happened to be a math class. I did not know how well I would survive that math class. I just knew that I was there, in the front of the classroom, ready to begin my journey toward my climatology degree.

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In the Path of Totality

August 2017

By Laurie Dougherty
Member of 350 Salem OR

All the while watching the sun disappear, I was thinking about the sun’s gifts—gifts of light and warmth. In its most fundamental processes, life on Earth is adapted to the sun. This is an ancient and intricate relationship. We abuse it at our peril. Mostly I was thinking that the sun gives us all the energy we need if only we would commit to using it. We are accustomed to hearing from naysayers and deniers who support the fossil fuel industry with all their might and money. But the momentum for renewable energy is building.

Folks from other 350 chapters recently shared articles that point to the “disruptive” nature of renewable energy—disruptive of the fossil fuel industry and the economic system it powers. One is a report from the Rocky Mountain Institute, Positive Disruption: Limiting Global Temperature Rise To Well Below 2 C°.   This RMI report describes scenarios for rapid transitions in energy, agriculture and land use that could limit global average temperature increase to 1.5–2 C° above preindustrial levels.

The other article is from Below 2^o C, a website run by climate activists in Canada, about Tony Seba who teaches at Stanford and his book and lectures on Clean Disruption. Seba argues that a convergence of technologies will lead to exponential growth in renewables and the fading away of fossil fuels. He compares this to digital cameras overtaking film and smart phones overtaking land lines, and claims that, “New York City basically went from all horse to all car in 13 years.” Some 350 Seattle members along with others at the Backbone Campaign are involved with Solutionary Rail, an organization that shows the way to full electrification of freight and passenger rail, running on renewably generated electricity.

These are breathtaking, visionary ideas. They offer hope that we can break free from the downward spiral of climate chaos. But they also offer a cautionary tale: disruption can bring on a kind of chaos of its own. As the renewable energy economy emerges, we need to work hard to ensure that resources are used wisely and sustainably; that benefits are shared widely and equitably; and that workers and communities experience a just transition from the fossil fuel economy to one that is powered by the gifts of the sun.

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Do Public Demonstrations Make a Difference?

January 2017

By Linda Wallmark
Former Co-Coordinator of 350 Salem OR

After our rally in front of Senator Ron Wyden’s office last Monday someone turned to me and asked, “Do these types of rallies really help? After all, aren’t we just preaching to the choir?”

I have asked myself this same question, as I’m sure have many others. Last year, several of us from 350 Salem participated in the Break Free action in Anacortes. Hundreds of kayakers and marchers converged upon two refineries.  There were beautiful Native American led ceremonies with colorful and visually arresting signs and props. More than a hundred protesters camped out on railroad tracks for two nights and 52 people ended up being arrested (including our own Laurie Dougherty!).

Now THIS will make a difference, I thought. Great photo ops, Native Americans, arrests … it had it all. But aside from some articles in a few newspapers in the Seattle area, there was little mainstream media coverage. I was disappointed. Were we just preaching to the choir? Did it change anything?

There are two purposes for public demonstration. One purpose is to energize our base, what some might call “preaching to the choir.” The second purpose is to draw attention to our cause and hopefully change minds. They both are vitally important but, of the two, I would argue that preaching to the choir matters more.

When we rally together, we harness our private frustrations and anxieties to power a collective voice and will. This is transformative.

I find inspiration with every rally, large or small.  At Senator Wyden’s office, a man on the verge of his 90th birthday made a plea for the future of his great grandchildren, a woman on the verge of tears read her letter to Senator Wyden, and others added their voices while 33 people clustered under umbrellas in the sleet and snow listening attentively. These are things that move me and encourage me to never give up.  

As for the second purpose, that of drawing attention to our cause, here is what my husband and I have personally experienced during our own short involvement in the climate movement. We don’t do social media, but we do tell people about what we’re doing when the occasion arises. Additionally, after the Break Free action in Anacortes, I wrote a long, detailed description of the weekend, complete with photos, and sent it out to family and close friends.

The responses were varied. At first, except for our two sons, who seemed thrilled and proud, we got no response from friends and family. I think they didn’t know what to say. We had been involved in illegal activity. There were police involved. It was so unlike us. In order to understand the significance of what started to eventually happen, it helps to understand some of our family dynamics.

Ours is a large and harmonious family. We have our family gatherings and they are happy events. We talk about jobs, kids, vacations—typical small talk. Mostly, we tell jokes and laugh. I can’t speak about what happens in each nuclear unit, but generally in our extended family we are not the kind that pour over the little details of each other’s lives on social media or the phone. We don’t do a lot of texting back and forth. They rarely ask about our climate activism, but we sometimes share with them anyway. I know my husband and I are making a difference when one of our nieces buys an all-electric Golf and takes the time to send us a photo posed with all her kids gathered around it. Another niece emails us to ask for permission to read our account of the Break Free action aloud to her three children. A young cousin we don’t often see makes a point to sit across from me at a family gathering to excitedly tell me about her participation in a climate action event, and a sister who rarely shares her private feelings, calls to tell us of her anguish over the election and that she’s thinking about engaging in activism of some sort. I can’t help but think that our participation in 350 Salem OR has, at least in part, played a role in all this.

So, do public demonstrations make a difference? My response is a resounding YES!

We come away empowered and, even though it may not seem like it at the time, we influence those around us. I believe that the women’s vote, Indian independence, US civil rights protections, the end of the Vietnam war and South African apartheid would never have come about as they did without people getting out into the streets. It was the unrelenting accumulation of events, day after day, week after week, month after month that changed the established order.

It is not the average citizen, caught up in the minutia of daily life, who determines the course of our future. It is those of us who pay attention, who speak out, and who are willing to be uncomfortable—perhaps even risk arrest—that drive change forward.  We are the ones whom Margaret Mead spoke of in that well-known quotation, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

So, fellow thoughtful, committed citizens, let us go out into the streets, join our voices as one, and change the world!

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The Magic of 350

2016

By Laurie Dougherty
Former Co-Coordinator of 350 Salem OR

I have had some kind of connection to 350.org since before it was called 350. In the beginning it was Step It Up—a call to public officials to step up to the challenge of protecting the climate. A group of friends who had graduated together from Middlebury College in Vermont saw the need for “a climate movement that reflected the scale of the crisis” and joined with environmental author Bill McKibben to start it. They later changed the name to 350.org to reflect the scientific understanding that 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the safe upper limit for a stable climate.*

In the beginning word spread through the internet and by word of mouth to hold days of climate action everywhere. I was living in the Boston, Massachusetts, area at the time and on the first Step It Up day I went on a bike ride in Brookline, then to a community walk in the nearby Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston which ended at a subway station next to a bike path. Some of us biked and others took the subway intown to a rally on Boston Common.

Later that year I worked to organize a bike ride from a climate forum in one of Boston’s historic churches to the Energy Revolution Rallyat the Old North Bridge in Concord where the “shot heard ’round the world” was fired. But there was a remnant hurricane offshore and it was a raw, rainy, windy day. Only a couple of intrepid bicyclists made the trip from Boston to Concord, but hundreds attended these and other events. I stayed back in the warm, dry church in Boston. The Massachusetts Climate Action Network (MCAN), active in many cities and towns around the state, often organized events for 350 days of action.

On another 350 day of action in 2009, I also participated in three events: a bike ride that stopped first at a renewable energy/energy efficiency fair in a low income neighborhood of Boston, then went on to “Boston Underwater” in a park on the downtown waterfront. People walked around with life jackets, swim fins and kayak paddles. Tents simulated a climate refugee camp. Billionaires for Business as Usual strutted with messages like “Global Warming = a Longer Yachting Season” and “Money is Green.” Everyone gathered on steps behind a wall of sandbags and a Boston SOS banner for the group photo.

In 2010, 350 called for a Global Work Party. I was part of a volunteer crew at a community garden on the grounds of a community center. Another group of volunteers was retrofitting the center for energy efficiency, so we all worked side by side that day.

By 2011, as well as days of action, 350.org began calling for or joining in larger events like the No Keystone XL demonstrations at the White House where 1,200 people were arrested during two weeks of sit-ins. Much as I would have liked to go to DC, I had already made plans to retire and move to Salem at that time.

After moving here, together with friends in Occupy Salem OR and Oregon PeaceWorks, in May 2012 we organized a Bike/Walk Tour de Flood of some locations in Salem that were flooded earlier that year. This was for the 350.org theme “Connect the Dots Between Climate Change and Weather.” In 2013 we had a forum about climate action on the day of the national Forward on Climate march in Washington DC. Off and on we had some small street corner demonstrations around KXL and other issues. Many of us joined with people around the region in opposition to impending fossil fuel projects in the Pacific Northwest, attending hearings and rallies with Beyond Coal, Stand Up to Oil, and the Oregon No LNG Coalition.

Meanwhile, in Oregon and other places, 350 chapters began to pop up as people wanted to work together more coherently and strategically. 350.org began to assign staff to assist local chapters with toolkits, conference calls and listservs for sharing experiences. After staying in touch via email with a loose network of people in Salem, I invited them to a meeting in the spring of 2014 and we formed our 350 Salem OR chapter. 

A few of us, along with others from Oregon, went to the 400,000-strong People’s Climate March in New York City on September 21, 2014. Others participated in related events in Portland and Salem, along with several hundred thousand people around the world. All around the world, people marched behind the banner of climate justice.

Many thousands marched again in November and December 2015 in Paris and Salem and around the world to send a message to world leaders at the International Climate talks that we need serious action to meet the climate crisis. The agreement reached in Paris was a step in the right direction but is nowhere near sufficient. In the spring of this year, 350.org and allies called for escalated actions directed at key fossil fuel installations around the world in a campaign called Break Free from Fossil Fuels.

Members of 350 chapters and other climate action groups in the Pacific Northwest held three days of activities at Anacortes, Washington, near two oil refineries. Break Free PNW included a march and rally alongside the refineries led by local Native American tribes and incorporating a water blessing. Educational workshops took place at the campground where many participants stayed and in a downtown hall for local residents. Along with about two hundred people from around the region, I camped out on the rail line to block oil trains from entering the refineries. We were there from Friday evening until Sunday morning when a Washington State trooper swat team rousted us out at 5 a.m. Fifty-two of us were arrested. We go to trial in March 2017.

The magic of 350 is that it is local and global at the same time.

Most of what happen, happens because we make it happen—where we are, with our own resources, and in ways that reflect our own circumstances and concerns. But we are connected through a global network with people in 188 countries who project their own circumstances and concerns into our awareness, enlarging our perspective and strengthening our resolve.

We see the faces and hear the voices of people struggling with deadly pollution from coal fired power plants in India, rising sea levels in Bangladesh and Pacific Island nations, terrible droughts in sub-Saharan Africa, violent storms in the Philippines and Haiti, and historic floods in Europe, the U.S. and Pakistan.

We are humbled and inspired by the indigenous peoples who courageously resist predatory, even murderous, fossil fuel and logging companies in Ecuador, Honduras, Nigeria, Canada and Standing Rock. The 350 network is itself connected at all scales in intricate coalitions of community, environmental and social justice organizations confronting hard questions of how to nurture equity and justice in the face of climate change—how to create a Just Transition to a world with a stable climate and an economy that works for everyone.

With the recent election of Donald Trump, I feel like we have gone through the looking glass into a surreal and frightening world we do not yet understand. But as I told a friend, I also feel fortunate to be wrapped up in such a strong, supportive organization with the core values that the world desperately needs right now and with the resolve and experience to fight for those values with bold, creative non-violent strategies. That, too, is the magic of 350.

*As you can see by the chart below, we are now over 400 ppm of CO2. That chart, called the Keeling Curve for Ralph Keeling who began measuring CO2 at Mauna Loa, Hawaii in 1958, is a live link to the Mauna Loa measuring station maintained by the Scripps Oceanographic Institute. Scripps updates it every few days. The squiggle in the overall upward trend comes with the changing seasons: vegetation on the greater land mass in the Northern Hemisphere absorbs CO2 in spring and summer when crops grow and trees are in leaf, and then stops taking up CO2 in fall and winter. This has been called “the respiration of the planet.”