Open Spaces Views from the Northwest
  • Home
  • Articles
  • About
  • Showcase

Environmental

The Whys and Wherefores: Failures of Governance and Imagination [1]

April 07, 2023
How did progressive Oregon, and the country, get to stasis on climate change? Other countries have not locked up on the issue. Even the Brexit-inflected and flustered United Kingdom has a coherent and determined if stumbling-toward-solutions policy approach. Even China, as dependent as it is on coal, acknowledges its obligation to exit that fuel and […]
Read More »

Puddle Jumper

January 13, 2023
From above, old Earth offers a cartography of troublesfor any long-flyer beating north or south—duck,swan, swallow, hawk, owl or wren—peering down to the red-lit blur of roads,cities bristling with blinding light, freeway web,tangle of wires tethered to slave trees, ancientmarsh gone to blacktop skin, the lacy skeinof the river’s former wanderings now boundin a run […]
Read More »

SCOTUS Should Allow EPA to Address Climate Pollution

March 24, 2022
Recently, the Supreme Court heard arguments in West Virginia v. EPA, a case challenging Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) long-standing authority to address climate pollution from power plants. Two decades ago, in the Whitman v. American Trucking Association case, Justice Scalia wrote for a unanimous Court affirming EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act (1970) to […]
Read More »

Who Do You Trust?

July 27, 2021
Have you ever marveled at the intelligence of a one-year old child? If so, you know that in their short lives they have learned a huge amount. Their ability to speak may be limited to single syllables, but they have mastered the ability to get their needs met: vocalizing repetitively “Ma,” and “Da,” and hand […]
Read More »

Returning Sea Otters to Oregon: Repairing a Torn Fabric

June 06, 2021
The ocean along the Pacific Coast is exhibiting unmistakable signs of stress as the result of a changing climate and pressures from other human activities. Increasingly acidic ocean water, caused by an over-abundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and in ocean waters, is affecting calcium-based marine life such as very young crab and oysters. […]
Read More »

Climate Action is Good for Health

January 29, 2019
Historically, when Americans hear “climate change,” we imagine a polar bear struggling on ever-shrinking ice. But our perceptions are beginning to shift: we may now be as likely to envision people suffering while working in the heat, fleeing wildfires, wading flooded streets, and checking their children for ticks. People are being affected – your parents, […]
Read More »

Salmon and the Northwest

April 16, 2017
There is not much of it left. Of untouched salmon habitat there is almost none. Although salmon once occupied almost every ocean-seeking stream in the Pacific Northwest, the map where salmon go has been shrinking for over a hundred years, sometimes gradually as human forces slowly worsened the habitat, sometimes suddenly when millions of acres […]
Read More »

Recent Comments

    Archives

    Categories

    • Uncategorized

    Meta

    • Log in
    • Entries feed
    • Comments feed
    • WordPress.org
    • Reading & Writing
    • The Arts
    • Public Policy
    • Law
    • Science
    • Physical & Mental Wellbeing
    • Adventure
    • Sports
    • People
    • Anthology
    Sign up for our newsletter   
    Copyright © 2025  Open Spaces Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

    Don’t miss out!
    Join the Open Spaces
    mailing list for
    occasional updates on
    newly-posted articles!