39 results for tag: climate
Using Data to Save Lives in Extreme Heat: Multnomah County’s New Interactive Heat Vulnerability Index Tool
Oregon’s most populous county is harnessing data to help decision-makers and emergency response groups prioritize areas for urgent and long-term solutions to protect people from dangerous heat.
Earth Day 2023: Reflections and Resolve
For Earth Day, we asked OEC team members to reflect on their connections to the natural world and their commitment to protecting the environment.
Climate Champion: Governor Brown’s Legacy and the Path Ahead
Governor Brown delivered historic climate policy protections. Now it’s up to Governor Kotek to build on this progress.
New Initiatives for Safe, Affordable, Climate-Friendly Homes and Buildings
The 2023 legislative session presents a vital opportunity to make progress in achieving our climate goals and protect families and communities from ever-worsening climate impacts. OEC is excited to support a “Building Resilience” policy package this session that will cut pollution and increase the climate resilience of our homes and buildings
Recognizing the vital need to transform and expand Oregon’s building stock in a way that maximizes climate, public health, affordability, and job creation benefits for Oregon, the 2022 legislature established the “Resilient, Efficient Buildings (REBuilding) Task Force.” The REBuilding ...
NW Natural Wants to Raise Rates (Again). This is What You Need to Know.
NW Natural, a utility company that sells fossil “natural” gas (e.g. methane), wants to raise prices for Oregon customers for a second year in a row. What they are planning to do with the money is, quite frankly, jaw-dropping, which is why OEC and a group of environmental and community-based organizations, represented by the Green Energy Institute at Lewis & Clark Law School and Earthjustice, are pushing back as formal intervenors in an ongoing public “rate case” proceeding. To get to the bottom of it, I sat down with Nora Apter, OEC’s Climate Program Director, to learn more about what NW Natural is doing and why their customers–or ...
Climate Change and Agriculture: How are they connected and what’s to be done?
What is climate change and how does it work?
We’ve all heard the phrase “climate change,” but what does that phrase mean? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) defines climate change as “a long-term (decades to centuries) change in any of a number of environmental conditions for a given place and time—such as temperature, rainfall, humidity, cloudiness, wind, and air circulation patterns.” So any shift in weather patterns lasting for a prolonged period of time can be called climate change. Today most people who say “climate change” are referring to the steady well-documented increases in Earth’s temperature ...
No time to burn: let’s keep the future of gas short in Oregon
By: Nora Apter, the Climate Program Director for Oregon Environmental Council. Greer Ryan, Oregon Clean Buildings Policy Manager with Climate Solutions.
When it comes to global warming pollution, we’ve heard a lot about the dangers of too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But did you know that methane, the primary ingredient in so-called “natural” gas, is approximately 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere over a 20 year timeframe? Fossil “natural” gas is far from being the safe, clean product that gas utilities and fossil fuel companies claim. In reality, gas is not good for you or the ...
Building for a Better Future
Right now, there is an important conversation happening in Oregon, and around the country, about buildings. The buildings in which we live and work are a critical piece of the climate puzzle. They are both vital to reducing climate change causing fossil fuels and our first line of defense against climate harms like extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and air pollution.
Buildings are the second largest–and growing–source of climate pollution in Oregon, responsible for 34 percent of the state’s total greenhouse gas emissions. This is due to the fossil fuels used for electricity to power our homes and buildings, and the fossil gas piped in for heating ...
Life hack: save money and the planet at the same time
If you've lived in Oregon for the last couple years, you are well aware of the urgent threat climate change poses to our communities, public health, and way of life. We have all seen and experienced first hand the devastating and deadly climate-fueled wildfires and temperature extremes that have ravaged our state in recent seasons.
Two recent reports from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) underscore Oregon’s climate experience, documenting the impacts of climate change and the danger of inaction, and laying out key policy solutions to limit warming and avoid catastrophic climate impacts. The IPCC Climate ...