Science

Climate Action is Good for Health

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, […]

Why Don’t We Use What We Know?

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 […]

Volcanoes and Superquakes: Living with Geologic Hazards in the Pacific Northwest

For most residents of the Pacific Northwest, the region’s spectacular landscape — from rugged coastlines to towering, glacier-clad peaks — seems permanent and unchanging. For the Native Americans who inhabited the area for millennia before Anglo-Americans settled it, however, the land’s apparent stability and tranquility was recognized as a dangerous illusion. As their oral traditions […]

Salmon and the Northwest

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 […]