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Steven Kaag is an Artist living in Stockholm

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High Country News •

A just transition for farmworkers

Over the next few days, temperatures crept into the triple digits. In Oregon, emergency rules to protect farmworkers go into effect when the heat index reaches 90 degrees Fahrenheit. In California, additional rules are triggered at 95 degrees. But in Washington, which is second only to California in producing labor-intensive crops like apples, asparagus, hops and berries, the mercury has to hit 100 before employers are required to provide shade or guarantee rest breaks. In an industry notorious
High Country News •

What’s missing in California’s solar debate

The community solar project in El Dorado Park, near Fresno, California, had all the trappings of a great renewable energy project. It was designed with community input from the start. Almost all of El Dorado’s residents are low-income renters living in apartment buildings or multi-family housing units, and they wanted to have greenspace and community solar. They found two vacant lots in their neighborhood that the owners were willing to sell for a reasonable price, and, together with the El Dora
High Country News •

Wildfires’ unequal impacts on pregnant people

In 2018, Amy Padula, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, was pregnant in the midst of historic mega-fires tearin through California. An epidemiologist with a background in medical anthropology, she already knew that air pollution is bad for pregnant people and fetal development, but she wanted to know just how much worse wildfire was making things. From heat events to air pollution and exposure to infectious diseases, climate change affects everyone’s health. But the risk
High Country News •

Portland community leaders bring the heat to building standards

On a cold December morning, Anjeanette Brown sat inside a Shari’s restaurant, nursing a cup of coffee and casually pushing sharp objects out of the reach of their 1-year old daughter. Brown, a Black environmental activist, grew up in northeast Portland, once home to a thriving Black community. The area’s cornerstones — the Cotton Club, Joe’s Place and Geneva’s Shear Perfection — survive only as historical posters, replaced by faux French cafes and vegan restaurants. Brown now lives farther east,
High Country News •

The beauty and complexity of farm work in Washington

Jesús’ daughter, Rosalinda Guillén, runs Community-to-Community Development in Bellingham, Washington, a 20-year-old grassroots organization focused on food justice and immigrant rights. The organization collects paintings, posters, and other artwork created by farmworkers or their family members, including Rosalinda’s father’s work. They portray farmworkers in a myriad of ways: at times playful, serene, beautiful and almost transcendental. She calls this “artivism” — a way of resisting a system
High Country News •

A just transition for farmworkers

Over the next few days, temperatures crept into the triple digits. In Oregon, emergency rules to protect farmworkers go into effect when the heat index reaches 90 degrees Fahrenheit. In California, additional rules are triggered at 95 degrees. But in Washington, which is second only to California in producing labor-intensive crops like apples, asparagus, hops and berries, the mercury has to hit 100 before employers are required to provide shade or guarantee rest breaks. In an industry notorious
Popular Science •

Farm workers exposed to climate change effects are demanding protections

In August 2020, at the end of an unusually hot and dry summer, wildfires spread across Northern California. The LNU Lightning Complex fires burned through more than 360,000 acres over the course of six weeks, striking the area’s vineyards and becoming one of the most destructive wildfires in California’s history.

Tens of thousands of people evacuated, but one group stayed.

Grape harvesting, which usually runs from August until November, had just begun, and farm workers rushed into evacuation z
Mongabay Environmental News •

Pay or punish? Study looks at how to engage with farmers deforesting the Cerrado

During last year’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, more than 140 countries committed to halting and reversing deforestation by 2030. The Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use recognized the critical role of all forest types for biodiversity, sustainable land use, and mitigating and adapting to climate change, among many other benefits.

This was just the latest in a growing list of attempts by governments, traders, supermarket chains, and multinational companies to limit or wipe
Vox •

Want to know how to save nature? Ask Indigenous scientists.

Victor Manuel Hernandez believes he wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for a banana tree. As a 14-year-old resistance fighter during the civil war in 1970s El Salvador, he hid beneath the tree’s lush, green fronds when the military attacked his encampment. He’d been shot and a bomb fell directly overhead. But as he recalls, the bomb landed in the leaves of the banana tree, which he believes prevented it from igniting — shielding him from death.

After the attack ended, he mustered the strengt
InvestigateWest •

‘Cultural resources are not a renewable thing for us.’

The West’s largest green energy storage project would destroy a Yakama sacred site. Now, the nation is fighting back.

Jeremy Takala, a Yakama citizen, was fishing for sockeye and summer chinook a few years ago, just downstream from the John Day Dam on the Columbia River. He was accompanied by a Yakama elder, who pointed to a high ridge towering above them covered in juniper bushes, shrubs and grasses that plunged dramatically into the river over 2,000 feet below. The site is called Pushpum, or
Photo by Brett Sayles on Pexels

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