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This was the time Friends of Trees planted saplings at a national park.

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This is an interview between Walter Isaacson and Robert Bullard about how racism and environment plays a direct role on each other.

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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And now: "The United States of America is segregated, and so is pollution" - those words from our next guest, the so-called father of environmental justice, Robert Bullard. As a sociologist in the 1970s, he shone a light on how minority communities in Houston, Texas, suffered most from pollution. Since then, he's written more than a dozen books on sustainable development, environmental racism, and climate justice. And he's been talking to our Walter Isaacson in Texas about all of this.

WALTER ISAACSON: I have been absolutely fascinated by the concept of environmental justice. Tell me what that concept means and how you became the father of that.

ROBERT BULLARD, AUTHOR AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCHOLAR: Well, environmental justice embraces the principle that all communities are entitled to equal protection of our housing, transportation, employment, and transportation energy. And so it's a concept that's rolled in equal protection, equal access, equal enforcement. And it's not a fuzzy issue. It's an issue of the right to live in a neighborhood that's not overpolluted, a neighborhood where your kids can play outside on the playground that's not next to a refinery or a chemical plant.

ISAACSON: And that's how you got into it. It was 1978.

BULLARD: 1978. That was so long ago. And it was an accident. It was an accident. You know, my wife came home one day and said, Bob, I have just sued the state of Texas, and I have sued this company that's trying to put this landfill in the middle of this suburban middle-class black community in Houston. And she said, I need somebody to collect data for this lawsuit and put the - where the pins are and where the landfills are on a map. And I said, well, you need a sociologist. She said, that's what you are, right?

(LAUGHTER)

BULLARD: That's how I got roped into this. I got drafted.

ISAACSON: And you discovered that there were like seven landfills. How many of those seven were in African-American neighborhoods?

BULLARD: Well, what I discovered, from the '30s up until 1978, that five out of five of the city-owned landfills were in black neighborhoods. Six out of the eight of the city-owned incinerators were in black neighborhoods, and three out of four of the privately owned landfills were in black neighborhoods, even though blacks only made up 25 percent of the population during that period of time. And this is in a city that - it's the fourth largest city and a city that doesn't have zoning. So somebody was making these decisions. And what we found is that it was not random. Everybody produces garbage, but everybody doesn't have to live next to the landfill. And it was not just a poverty thing. The subject of the lawsuit, Bean vs. Southwestern Waste Management, was a middle-class black neighborhood of homeowners; 85 percent of the people owned their homes. And so it was not a poverty park. It was not a ghetto. This was a solid middle-class neighborhood of houses and people and trees.

ISAACSON: The City Council of Houston that's making that decision back then, what's the racial makeup of that city council?

BULLARD: All white.

ISAACSON: All seven?

BULLARD: All seven.

ISAACSON: Yes.

BULLARD: So you get this whole idea of environmental justice also means having access to decisions that are being made and making sure that there's access, and that no one segment of our city or a county or region should be making decisions for other people. And so the idea that this was a policy of not having individuals on the City Council in that room saying, well, let's not just put all the landfills or the incinerators or the garbage dump in this one area. And so it's a matter of equity, a matter of fairness and a matter of civil rights.

ISAACSON: And how does climate change affect this?

BULLARD: Well, climate change - if you look at environmental justice, climate change basically overlays this whole issue of who has contributed most and who is going to be impacted the greatest. And if you look at the footprint of climate change - and climate change is more than parts per million and greenhouse gases. It also includes who is most vulnerable. Who is going to have the burden of living in these areas that are going to be hit hard, whether it's droughts or there's flooding or whether other kinds of issues. And, again, climate change, sea level rise will exacerbate the inequities that already exist. If people are poor, they're in low-lying areas that's prone to flooding, you're going to get more flooding. You're going to get more droughts and more disasters. You're going to get more of issues of the widening gap between haves and have-nots. And you're going to get this whole piling on effect of not having, you know, a level of resilience to bounce back because of a flood.

ISAACSON: So let's be specific. You were here for Harvey, right? How many inches of rain did Harvey dump on Houston?

BULLARD: Fifty-two, 53, whatever. Nobody counted on that. I have worked on environmental justice and climate issues and disasters for 40 years, and working with other communities that have been forced to evacuate. I never had to be evacuated until Harvey. In this case, it was very unique for me and very unique for a lot of people, because, in some places, some neighborhoods, some areas had never flooded before.

ISAACSON: How did the city flood, white areas vs. black areas?

BULLARD: Well, if you look at the GIS maps, studies just came out last year showing that the communities that historically that have flooded over a period of time - we're not talking major storms. We're talking mostly African-American, Latino areas in terms of the East Side. Divide the city in half. Harvey basically followed that pattern. Even though a large part of the city flooded, the areas that got hit the hardest are the areas that historically have always gotten hit hard.

ISAACSON: Houston is famous for not having many zoning laws. How does that affect things?

BULLARD: Well, as a matter of fact, Houston is a no-zoning city, and it's very proud of that. It's unrestrained capitalism. And it means that, historically, it's the only residential protection land use device is with deed - renewable deed restrictions. But the fact is that we have a lot of our land uses that's willy-nilly, a lot of building that's in areas that we probably shouldn't be building in. And the idea of, how do we make corrective action that's happened over the last 50, 75 years, it's hard to do that now. So that means that we have to come up with sensible planning. We have to talk about how we're going to, in some cases, probably restrict the kinds of development that most cases would be dictated by money, as opposed to some common sense. And so-

ISAACSON: Wait. Give me an example of that.

BULLARD: Well, in terms of a lot of the houses that flooded on the western part of the city were built right up to the reservoirs. And - Addicks, Barker reservoirs. And these - and those houses, we're not talking low-income, middle-income. We're talking very well-heeled families, million-dollar, $2 million homes that were built in a floodplain and that were built in the areas that, with an event like Harvey, is bound to flood. And you talk about what it means to provide protection, not just for well- heeled communities, and the idea that, if we can provide the kinds of flood protection and flood mitigation and the kinds of restructuring of our land uses, and allow for some communities to somehow relocate, it has to be a plan that brings a lot of communities to the table. And, historically, Houston has not been a city that has been diverse when it comes to decision-making. It's been mostly a top-down. And so I think Harvey has brought a lot of rethinking of what that means.

ISAACSON: Has Harvey brought people of different socioeconomic and racial groups together?

BULLARD: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. But you have to look at it and say, it took a biblical flood to bring a lot of the groups and organizations that generally had not worked together on a lot of issues, organizations that work on wetlands and on prairie issues, issues of environment, pollution, industry, transportation. It brought a lot of groups together. We came - almost three dozen groups came together and decided that we need to be talking, we need to be working together. And we came up with this organization named the Coalition for Environment, Equity and Resilience, CEER. And, again, the heart of that whole thinking is an equity lens. And one of the first things we did is, we came together and came up with this framework. And we presented the framework, equity framework, to the county, Harris County. And they basically adopted this whole idea that future development and future funding of projects dealing with Harvey or flood mitigation or going forward must be looked at through an equity lens.

ISAACSON: Houston, how segregated is it racially and economically?

BULLARD: Well, you know, Houston is still segregated. It's segregated by race, and it's also segregated by income. And, again, if you look at this whole idea of concentration of white affluent census tracks, or zip codes, you can see that increasing. You can also see the increasing numbers of low-income families, families of color, concentrated in those census tracks, in those areas.

ISAACSON: Wait. Wait. So you're saying it's becoming more segregated?

BULLARD: More income-segregated.

ISAACSON: Why?

BULLARD: Well, that's a big question of the day. And it's not just a Houston question. We are becoming more and more separate and apart by income. And affluent people feel more comfortable living with affluent people. And, oftentimes, poor people don't have a choice but live around poor people. And housing choices oftentimes will dictate where people live. And the fact is that Houston and most major cities in this country have a housing affordability issue. And if you have to drive to qualify, which means drive long distances to qualify for housing in terms of ownership, that means that the housing that's available, people have to settle for less. And more and more people are settling in those areas where they can afford. That means that you're having more and more concentrated areas with people of color, as well as poor people. Now, that's not the best way to create healthy, livable, sustainable, resilient cities, but that's what we get when we let market forces drive it, as opposed to trying to assist and support a sane program of creating more, what - what do they call it, mixed income housing and mixed use.

ISAACSON: Right.

BULLARD: I will tell you another thing. It's not just the housing being segregated. So is pollution. Pollution is segregated, which means that, as you start getting more and more low-income families and families of color concentrated in areas where there's lots of pollution, more and more pollution gets put in those areas. And so you get the segregation of income and race, but you also get the income of pollution. And that's where we say - you know, I wrote a book on this called "The Wrong Complexion for Protection." And it means that - and I'm not just talking about race. It's also income. Middle-income African-Americans are more likely to live in neighborhoods - when I say middle income, I'm talking $50,000 to $60,000 - are more likely to live in neighborhoods that are more polluted than whites who make $10,000. You say, how can that be? It means that there is a racial and economic dynamic in housing that allow low-income whites to move into middle-income areas and to exit polluted neighborhoods, whereas institutional racism will keep black families, middle-income, in those neighborhoods.

ISAACSON: After Katrina, we all realized in New Orleans we were in the same boat, and it did bring us together some. And we did rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward, but there was more of an integration of the city. Do you think environmental catastrophes like Harvey will start doing that in places like Houston, make people realize we're all in the same boat?

BULLARD: Well, you know, I hope we don't have to wait for a disaster. But it did. And the kinds of - in some cases, these wakeup calls oftentimes are the only thing that will wake us up, and to a reality that - I have a saying, that when we don't protect the least in our society, we place everybody at risk. We don't strengthen the levees or we don't provide flood protection for one segment, we place everybody at risk. When we don't provide protection in terms of immunization or whatever, then it will place everybody at risk. And so it seems to me that a justice frame, an equity frame should be the logical framework to accept. But, you know, we are a hard-headed society.

(LAUGHTER)

BULLARD: It's almost like we need a two-by-four to hit us over the head and wake us up and say, aha. And we need those aha moments before disasters hit. But I do think that Houston post-Harvey is a different Houston in terms of thinking, in terms of mind-sets, in terms of thinking about this whole idea that we are a big city, and that we can't just somehow have communities that are invisible. I wrote a book in 1987 called "Invisible Houston." Houston in 1987 had the largest African-American population of any city in the South. There were over a half-million black people in Houston, more people than in Atlanta or New Orleans. And so the idea that, even though you had this large black population, the black community was invisible when it came to landfills, incinerators, was invisible when it came to economic development, providing the kinds of growth and planning that will build communities that was - that had those things. Middle-income African-American communities in Houston didn't have the same kind of amenities as the low-income white communities. So the idea that invisible, that invisibility must be erased, and we must make all communities visible, so that they can join in this new green energy economy and post-disaster to talk about building resilience. There has - you know, when we talk about climate, we talk about climate justice. When we talk about the environment, we talk about environmental justice. When we talk about energy, we talk about energy justice. All these things, when you look at the justice framework, it can apply to almost all the aspects when we talk about issues around sustainability.

ISAACSON: In Houston, and to some extent in all of Texas, the energy industry just doesn't even like to utter the words climate change. Is it possible to move towards environmental justice without confronting climate change head on?

BULLARD: No, it's impossible. When we talk about climate change and we talk about environmental justice, when we start connecting, you know, the tissue of climate responsibility and the issue around vulnerability, you can't get around solutions, real solutions, without talking about justice inequity. That's why the climate justice frame is a frame that, as I said, is more than just looking at greenhouse gases in parts per million. It brings in the issue of which communities are vulnerable, which communities have contributed least to the crisis, but are feeling the pain right now, first, worst, and longest. That's true here in Houston. It's also true in Texas. It's also true in the United States and globally, this whole issue of vulnerability and the whole issue of, how can we make sure that our plans do not further marginalize already vulnerable populations by creating plans that somehow exacerbate that vulnerability and create more problems for that - quote - "invisible group," the group that may not necessarily be in the room when they're deciding what to build and where to spend moneys. That's the justice part. And even though the state of Texas may not recognize climate change as a concept, the whole issue of vulnerability and the whole issue of severe weather events, you look at the map, and there's no way for the state not to look at where the hot spots are and where the solutions need to be, where the mitigation and the adaptation will have to occur, no matter whether they believe in it or not. And that's why I tell people, I said, believing in climate change is not - it's not the issue. It's like asking somebody, do you believe in gravity? And it's not - believing in gravity is not - is not an issue. If you climb up a 50-story building and jump out, gravity will kick in. And so whether you believe it or not, it's real.

ISAACSON: Dr. Bullard, thank you so very much.

BULLARD: My pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you.

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Robert Bullard: How Environmental Racism Shapes the US

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The U.S. is segregated, and so is pollution. These words come from the so-called "father of environmental justice," Robert Bullard. As a sociologist, he has proved that minority communities in Houston suffer most from pollution and has written more than a dozen books on sustainable development, environmental racism and climate justice.

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Climate change is a ever growing issue in Oregon. Especially within my community. This article talks about how Oregon is affected by climate change and what that means for its communities.

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Within a few hundred miles in Oregon, you can see snowy volcanoes, parched deserts, semiarid grasslands, alpine meadows, and coastal temperate rainforests. On any given day, the weather across the state can range from freezing cold to baking hot, bone dry to soaking wet, tranquil to tempestuous. Oregon regularly experiences the extremes of average precipitation, temperature, humidity, and wind characteristic of the North American West. Locations in the Coast Range, for example, receive as many as 200 inches of rain in some years, while the rain shadow of Steens Mountain in eastern Oregon sometimes receives as little as five inches. Even highly variable weather creates patterns over time, however, and scientists use the word climate to describe those patterns over decades or even centuries.

Oregon's climate is not only diverse, it is also changing. In geological time-the intervals of time that geologists use to chart changes and sequences of events in the rock record-Oregon's climate has vacillated between tropical and arctic. Since the Industrial Revolution, however, human activities have contributed to changes in the Earth's climate, causing geological change on shorter, human timescales. Scientists refer to the changes that humans make to climate as anthropogenic climate change. Those changes have occurred largely as a result of changes in the composition of the atmosphere, particularly through the emission of greenhouse gases like CO ₂ that increase the overall temperature of the Earth. Because anthropogenic climate change, on balance, increases the overall temperature of the planet, it is also often referred to as anthropogenic warming or, more commonly, global warming. The terms are not perfectly interchangeable, but all have been used to describe the causes of the climate crisis, a term scientists and concerned citizens often use to refer to the related negative impacts of an increase in average global temperatures on animal and human populations, as well as the ecosystems and infrastructure on which they rely.

Global warming already impacts or is projected to impact Oregon's natural and built environments, its ecosystems, and its economy. The state's average temperatures have increased by 2.2ºF (1.2ºC) since 1895, and scientists predict they will increase by another 5ºF (2.8ºC) by 2050 and 8.2ºF (4.6ºC) by 2080. Scientists project that Oregon will see an increase in annual precipitation in the twenty-first century, with more of that precipitation falling as rain and less as snow during warmer, wetter winters. Twenty-first-century Oregon summers are hotter and drier than they were in the twentieth century, and extreme heat events have increased in frequency and severity. Instances of drought have also increased, snowpack has decreased, and spring runoff is occurring earlier. These changes tax the state's water resources, which support ecosystems, and physical infrastructure that was built for a different climatic regime. They also create a greater likelihood of large-scale fire events, drive new energy demands while compromising hydroelectric energy supplies, and exacerbate threats to endangered and threatened ecosystems and human communities. Changes in ocean temperature, ocean acidity, and sea level threaten the relative stability of coastal and maritime environments.

Anthropogenic climate change presents opportunities in Oregon for certain species, industries, and communities, and some efforts to adapt to and mitigate climate change present opportunities to address equity and social justice. Even so, under current conditions, many of the most severe negative effects of climate change-including extreme heat events, flooding, increased wildfire smoke, and threats to key native species like salmon and steelhead-disproportionately affect the state's racial and ethnic minorities, tribal communities, and the poor, and they are projected to do so in the future.
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How Climate Changes

Climate describes the characteristic weather of a place over time. The word "climate" also serves as a shorthand way to describe the global climate system, which is made up of the many factors that interact to influence the average temperature of the Earth. Scientists call factors that influence the overall temperature of the Earth "climate forcings" or, more accurately, "radiative forcings." Positive forcings, such as greenhouse gases, tend to increase the temperature of the Earth. Negative forcings, such as some atmospheric aerosols that reflect sunlight, tend to decrease the temperature of the Earth. Forcings can also occur on a local scale, often as a consequence of landscape changes that alter the amount of energy a place reflects compared to how much it absorbs. A large asphalt parking lot, for example, will typically absorb and re-radiate more heat than a nearby forested park.

On a planetary scale, some radiative forcings operate in geological time, independent of human actions. Long-term variations in the Earth's orbit, for example, have contributed to warming and cooling trends over thousands and hundreds of thousands of years due to variations in the distance of the Earth from the sun. Other radiative forcings that humans do influence, such as greenhouse gas concentrations, have also fluctuated in the absence of humans in geological time, though typically at a much slower rate than during the past two centuries.

In Oregon, regional geophysical changes affecting the Pacific Northwest's geological features over hundreds of thousands and even millions of years, as well as larger-scale changes in the Earth's atmosphere, oceans, and orbital path, have created wide-ranging climatic conditions. During the last ice age, which occurred during the late Pleistocene, Oregon was much colder than it is today, with significant ice caps covering Mount Hood and the Oregon Cascades until roughly 18,000 to 12,000 years ago. Sixteen million years ago, however, tropical and subtropical climates in what are now temperate parts of Oregon, such as the John Day Fossil Beds, created an environment for species of bananas, citrus, and tea.

Anthropogenic climate change occurs much more rapidly than geological climate change. Greenhouse gases-that is, gases that absorb and re-radiate energy from the sun, such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane-represent the most important forcings involved in anthropogenic climate change. As early as 1827, French polymath Jean-Baptiste Jacques Fourier recognized that these gases were largely responsible for the even distribution of heat throughout the globe. He was the first to describe this effect, using the word serre, which is French for greenhouse, although it is an inaccurate description of how these gases actually behave. A greenhouse works primarily by preventing air warmed by the sun from escaping an enclosed space, while the "greenhouse effect" describes the way atmospheric gases themselves warm up, absorbing and re-radiating heat from both the sun and the surface of the earth.

Working independently in the 1850s and 1860s, American scientist and suffragist Eunice Foote and Irish physicist and mountaineer John Tyndall each conducted experiments showing that water vapor and carbon dioxide worked as important greenhouse gases. As other scientists soon noted, whereas humans contribute only indirectly to the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, they contribute directly to the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels. In 1896, Swedish Nobel laureate chemist Svante Arrhenius calculated that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would warm the earth by around 5ºC (9ºF). Later, more sophisticated computer models revised Arrhenius's calculations, predicting that a doubling of CO ₂ will result in a 1.5-4ºC (2.7-7.2ºF) rise in temperature. In 1938, British steam engineer Guy Stewart Callendar argued that the warming of the earth due to carbon dioxide from fossil fuels was underway.

In 1956, nuclear physicist Hans Suess devised a way to use radioactive carbon isotopes to measure just how much additional atmospheric CO ₂ came from fossil fuels. He and oceanographer Roger Revelle soon realized that Callendar was probably right. Two years later, Revelle helped secure funding for Charles David Keeling to begin measuring atmospheric CO 2 at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, and later elsewhere around the globe. By increasing the CO ₂ in the atmosphere, the scientists suggested, humanity was carrying out a "grand geophysical experiment," which they hoped Keeling's measurements would help to record. The iconic image of anthropogenic climate change, which depicts the annually oscillating, upward-sloping graph of atmospheric carbon dioxide since 1958, is called the Keeling Curve. Carbon dioxide serves as a benchmark in the global climate system, and scientists describe the potential for other gases to contribute to climate change by comparing them to carbon dioxide, calculating their CO ₂ equivalent (CO ₂ e).
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How Scientists Know What They Know About Climate Change

Scientists measure CO ₂, other greenhouse gases, and temperature to track changes in the global climate system. They also create models to understand how CO ₂ e and other climate forcings affect the earth's energy budget-that is, the total amount of energy flowing into and out of the climate system. These are called energy budget models. Actual variations in temperature and precipitation due to climate change vary considerably over the planet, however, and simple energy budget models don't capture these variations well. Other models, called general circulation models, assess how changes in the energy budget affect the circulation of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans, which directly impact weather and climate. In their models, scientists often use known quantities from the past to verify them, by comparing their models' results with measured climatic trends from the past.Using a combination of theoretical knowledge, observed data, and model simulations, scientists have built a sophisticated understanding of the global atmosphere that enables them to describe and predict the behavior of the global climate system under a number of possible greenhouse gas conditions. These are called emissions scenarios.

Scientific institutions periodically conduct assessments of what is known about anthropogenic climate change. Internationally, the most important body for evaluating the scientific consensus on climate change is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has conducted a comprehensive assessment roughly every five to seven years since its founding in 1990. According to the IPCC, most scientistsagree that anthropogenic climate change has begun to affect humans, other species, and the environments they inhabit; that the production of CO ₂ and other greenhouse gases by human activities represents the primary cause of anthropogenic climate change; and that human activities will likely continue to drive increasingly large changes to the climate in the future.

In Oregon, scientists conduct periodic reviews of what is known about how climate change affects the state. Since 2007, the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University has conducted biennial assessments of climate change in Oregon in the service of the Oregon Global Warming Commission. OCCRI completed its Fifth Oregon Climate Assessment Report (OCAR5) in January 2021. Using emissions scenarios and models consistent with those used by the IPCC along with scientific literature on climate change in Oregon, OCAR5's thirty-two authors assessed the state of the science on eleven climate-related topics, focusing on natural hazards and the challenges of adaptation in natural and human systems.

How Climate Change Impacts Oregon

Temperature is perhaps the most obvious and important indicator of climate change. Globally, the Earth's average surface temperature has increased by just over 2ºF (1.1ºC) since 1895, at a rate of about 0.14ºF (0.08ºC) per decade. The rate of warming has been more than double the average in more recent decades, however, at 0.32ºF (0.18ºC) per decade since 1981. Oregon temperatures have largely followed the same trend. Oregon's average temperature has increased by 2.2ºF (1.2ºC) since 1895, with a similar increase in the rate of change in the past four decades. If current trends in global emissions persist, Oregon's average temperature will increase by 5ºF (2.8ºC) by 2050 and 8.2ºF (4.6ºC) by 2080.

Anthropogenic climate change also brings changes in the timing, intensity, and type of precipitation the state receives. Annual precipitation varies widely across the state and from year to year, but Oregon generally experiences a winter wet season punctuated by large precipitation events and a summer dry season with little rain or snow. Climate models predict that this trend will persist and intensify, with an increase in total average annual precipitation for the state as a whole. Much of that precipitation will fall during large winter storms that are associated with atmospheric rivers, which are long corridors of warm, wet air in the atmosphere that are currently responsible for 25 to 30 percent of the precipitation in the state. Because of increased average temperatures, more and more of that precipitation is projected to fall as rain rather than snow during the winter, consequently decreasing snowpack across the state. Average spring snowpack has already decreased at every snow observation station in the state since 1955, including a decline of more than 35 percent since 1982 in the central Cascade Range.

Changes in the quantity, timing, and type of precipitation combine with the direct effects of increased temperatures to affect a variety of water-dependent systems throughout Oregon. Half of the energy produced in the state comes from hydroelectric power. Changes in the timing and quantity of precipitation and runoff in Pacific Northwest river systems threaten the efficacy and reliability of the system of dams and reservoirs that provide that energy. Low water and high temperatures also adversely affect some native aquatic species, most notably cold water migratory fish like salmon and steelhead. The state is already drought-prone, and the incidence and severity of drought has increased since the turn of the twenty-first century in the western United States and in Oregon in particular, with adverse effects on agriculture, recreation, and ecosystems. Though annual average precipitation will likely increase because of anthropogenic climate change, hotter and drier summers, decreased mountain snowpack, and reduced spring and summer runoff will make seasonal drought likely in the future. Meanwhile, as more precipitation falls as rain rather than snow, the risk of winter and spring floods will increase.

Warmer, drier summers-exacerbated by reduced snowpack and earlier, reduced runoff-also increase the risk of wildfires in Oregon. Since the 1990s, scientists have observed an increase in fire activity associated with a combination of climate change and historical fire-suppression strategies. Fires in Oregon's wildlands and at the wildland-urban interface during the summer and autumn of 2020 burned more than a million acres, displacing thousands of people and creating hazardous air quality across the Northwest, underscoring the changing wildfire dynamics in the state.

As a coastal state, Oregon is susceptible to changes in the ocean. Globally, increases in average temperatures contribute to the melting of glaciers, which raises sea levels. Global sea levels have risen between seven and eight inches since 1900, increasing the likelihood of storm-surge floods and coastal erosion along much of the Oregon shoreline. The ocean is also warming, and the eastern North Pacific is projected to warm by 5ºF (2.8ºC) by 2050, punctuated by periodic marine heatwaves like the one in 2014, when temperatures off the central Oregon Coast increased by 8.1ºF (4.5ºC). Increased water temperatures can disrupt marine ecosystems and alter the range of species like salmon and steelhead while compromising the health of other species like Dungeness crabs. Ocean temperatures also affect species that live above the water, including marbled murrelets, a threatened seabird that has been less likely to colonize certain habitats during years in which ocean temperatures were high.

Marine ecosystems underscore a larger trend. Throughout the state, changing air and water temperatures, precipitation patterns, and runoff associated with anthropogenic climate change exacerbate habitat loss and other pressures on species and ecosystems. The projected rate of climatic change over the next century exceeds anything in the last 65 million years, and it is difficult to predict how Oregon's flora and fauna will respond.

Climate change exacerbates existing stressors within human social systems as well. In Oregon, as elsewhere in the United States, climate change tends to magnify inequalities, particularly as they relate to public health, housing, and energy. This is especially true when it comes to the extreme heat events that accompany rising average temperatures. Extreme heat can come in the form of individual hot days, heatwaves, and full seasons with both daytime high temperatures and nighttime low temperatures well above average. In Oregon, scientists use the number of days above 90ºF as a benchmark for hot days. Since 1940, Portland and Pendleton have experienced an increase of the average number days above 90ºF by eight days; Medford's average number of hot days per year has increased by twenty-one in the period since 1940. The broader climatic effects of increased global temperatures can impact the weather patterns that drive extreme heat events like the midsummer heatwave of 2021, which brought the highest temperatures on record to western Oregon.

Extreme heat affects Oregon communities in different ways. The concentration of heavy, dense materials like asphalt and concrete absorbs heat well, so cities tend to be many degrees warmer than nonurban areas, even at night. This is called the heat island effect, and Portland has one of the most pronounced heat island effects in the United States. It does not occur consistently throughout the city, however. The geography of extreme heat reflects historical practices of segregation and redlining, a federal loan-rating system from the 1940s that banks and real estate agents used to methodically deny African Americans and other people of color loans in certain parts of the city, reinforcing segregation and disincentivizing investment in Black communities. As a result of insufficient investment and city neglect, historically Black neighborhoods have fewer of the mature trees, green spaces, and permeable surfaces that help mitigate the heat island effect. These neighborhoods are consequently the hottest in Portland, as much as 15ºF to 20ºF (8.3-11.1ºC) warmer than in Forest Park, a large urban area bordered by wealthy and mostly white neighborhoods.Economically disadvantaged neighborhoods and communities are also disproportionately vulnerable to wildfire smoke and other air quality hazards, to floods and storms, and to drought or water insecurity, all associated with anthropogenic climate change.

Oregon's Response to Climate Change

Oregon has long been a national leader in environmental advocacy and environmental policy, a legacy that primed the state for relatively early engagement with the policy and politics of climate change. Most of Oregon's early climate change policy initiatives occurred at the municipal level, beginning in 1993 when Portland became the first city in the United States to adopt a global warming reduction strategy. Since then, fourteen Oregon cities have committed to the development of Climate Action Plans-comprehensive municipal strategies for reducing emissions and adapting to the effects of climate change. As of 2022 the OCCRI has produced county-level climate change projections to support natural hazard mitigation plans for eleven counties, and many other Oregon counties have also incorporated climate change into natural hazard planning.

At a state level, the Oregon legislature passed House Bill 3543 in 2007, creating a Global Warming Commission to assess and plan for the impacts of climate change on Oregon's natural resources, economy, and communities. In 2019, the legislature passed House Bill 2020, which authorized a statewide emissions trading system aimed at reducing the state's emissions to 45 percent of 1990 levels by 2035. In 2020, Governor Kate Brown signed executive order 20-04, laying out a sector-by-sector Oregon Climate Action Plan focused on reducing Oregon's dependence on fossil fuel energy sources and promoting climate equity. It was an effort to ensure that the benefits of climate change policies are distributed equitably and that the effects of climate change do not disproportionately burden economically disadvantaged or marginalized communities.

Oregon is also the state where young people have waged an important national legal battle over climate change. In 2015, twenty-one young people represented by Our Children's Trust, an Oregon nonprofit, filed suit against the United States government in U.S. District Court for the State of Oregon for violating their constitutional right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by continuing to support programs that contribute to climate change. The case, Juliana v. United States, was still under adjudication in 2022.

Climate change is also an important issue outside state government and the courts. Oregon has long been a state where advocacy groups, scientific institutions, and other nonprofit organizations have focused on mitigating and adapting to the environmental, economic, and social impacts of climate change. Many national environmental organizations and climate advocacy groups, such as the Sierra Club and 360.org, have strong Oregon chapters, and there are several homegrown environmental, conservation, and land use groups such as 1000 Friends of Oregon, the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, and Energy Trust of Oregon. Talented authors, artists, and musicians in Oregon, including artist Daniela Molnar, have engaged with the ideas and consequences of climate crisis through their creative work.

Tribal governments in Oregon are also deeply involved in planning for and adapting to anthropogenic climate change. Tribes face many disproportionate effects of climate change, in large part the result of a history of dispossession and genocide. In addition to exacerbating vulnerability to extreme weather, natural hazards, and food insecurity in tribal communities, climate change presents unique threats to tribal culture and traditions rooted in generational relationships to place. Changes to the distribution of plant and animal species and to animal behavior associated with climate change undermine traditional environmental knowledge-that is, place-specific forms of practical and spiritual understanding that is often passed from generation to generation with other forms of cultural practices. At least fifteen Oregon tribes have developed climate vulnerability assessments, adaptation plans, and hazard mitigation plans, focused not only on building resiliency to climate change but also on shoring up treaty rights, expressing sovereignty, and attempting to redress some of the historical wrongs that made the tribes vulnerable to climate change in the first place.

If anthropogenic climate change presents unique, historically situated challenges for Oregon tribes, their responses to climate change also underscore the ways in which efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change can present opportunities to promote equity and resiliency in human and ecological communities throughout the state. Increases in average temperature and changes in precipitation create problems in and of themselves, but the most severe effects of climate change arise from the ways in which global warming exacerbates other vulnerabilities and inequalities in human and ecological systems. As a result, addressing climate change is not only a matter of reducing emissions and shoring up infrastructure; it is also about addressing present inequalities and historical injustices that stand in the way of a healthy, just, and resilient Oregon in the face of a volatile climatic future.

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Within a few hundred miles in Oregon, you can see snowy volcanoes, parched deserts, semiarid grasslands, alpine meadows, and coastal temperate rainforests. On ...

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Tree planting has such a historic meaning to it. Having my communtiy plant trees help with that narrative. The Hiroshima peace trees were planted as a sign of peace after the World War II bombing of Hiroshima.

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Oregon Department of Forestry : Hiroshima peace trees : Forest benefits : State of Oregon

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Thirty Oregon communities planted a total of 45 Hiroshima peace trees in 2019 and 2020 through a combined effort by the Oregon Department of Forestry, Oregon Community Trees and the One Sunny Day Initiative.