Cascadia Was Poised to Lead on Climate. Can It Still?
BC, Washington and Oregon all aimed to slash emissions. After epic battles, they failed. First in a series on creating a zero-carbon bioregion.
Peter Fairley is an award-winning journalist based in Victoria and San Francisco, whose writing has appeared in Scientific American, NewScientist, Hakai Magazine, Technology Review, the Atlantic, Nature and elsewhere. SHARES Aji Piper, now 20, was 15 when he joined a lawsuit against the US government for failing on climate change. Here he wears a mask during one of Washington s climate-driven smoke emergencies.
Photo by Alex Garland. [Editor’s note: This is the first in a year-long occasional series of articles produced by InvestigateWest in partnership with The Tyee and other news organizations exploring what it will take to shift the Cascadia region to a zero-carbon economy.]
Washington, Oregon and British Columbia all pledged to slash greenhouse gas emissions, and all fell short. Why?
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Twenty-year-old Aji Piper was 15 when he became a plaintiff in a landmark lawsuit in which youths are suing the U.S. government on the grounds that it is continuing to allow climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions. He is pictured here wearing a mask to protect himself during one of Washington s climate-driven smoke emergencies. (Alex Garland)
With dozens of people killed by wildfires in the western U.S., millions of acres scorched and choking smoke spreading far into British Columbia, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee lit up the news wires in September. These are not just wildfires,” Inslee asserted at a press conference from Olympia, “these are
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Read time: 11 mins By Dana Drugmand • Monday, December 21, 2020 - 13:17
This year with its converging crises, from the coronavirus pandemic to longstanding racial injustice to climate-related disasters was also a remarkably active time for climate litigation. All around the world, communities, organizations, and especially young people turned to the courts in 2020 in strategic attempts to hold governments and polluting companies accountable for exacerbating the unfolding climate emergency.
In particular, this year saw a notable uptick in climate accountability litigation with multiple new cases filed in the U.S. and internationally.
“This extremely challenging year has made clear that people and the planet must come first,” Kristin Casper, general counsel with Greenpeace International, told DeSmog in an emailed statement. “Many are taking action to make it a reality by bringing their demands for climate justice