Oregon is high on the list of states focused on sustainable building practices, according to a new report.

The state comes in at number 10 in U.S. Green Building Council's ranking released today. The ranking is based on the construction of LEED-certified buildings, a widely used system which rates environmentally friendly practices.

In 2022, Oregon added more than six million square feet of LEED certified space.

Stephanie Gabriel, pacific regional director for the U.S. Green Building Council, said the next step for the state is to expand this type of construction outside major cities.

"Bringing green buildings to more rural environments or small towns outside of Portland metro area and Salem; the larger cities of Oregon," Gabriel emphasized. "Making sure that we're addressing green building throughout the state."

Gabriel pointed out the Inflation Reduction Act signed by President Biden last year will bring federal funding to states with green building initiatives, which could increase the pace toward more sustainable construction.

Rhiannon Jacobson, managing director of U.S. market transformation and development for the council, said LEED certification involves rating operations of buildings such as air filtration, and stressed greener practices within a building have been shown to benefit the workers inside.

"A lot of the design principles that are put forth are going to allow for top performance," Jacobson noted. "We do see things like lower levels of absenteeism in a LEED building. We see lower turnover rates."

Oregon appears on the list for the second year in a row. California ranks fourth, and Massachusetts came in at number one.

Thousands of lives are cut short every year because of air pollution from coal-fired power plants in Wyoming and across the United States, according to a new Sierra Club report.

Rob Joyce, energy organizer for the Wyoming chapter of the Sierra Club, said harmful toxins released from burning coal have been linked to a number of health issues, including increased asthma attacks and acute bronchitis, and in severe cases can contribute to an increase in heart attacks and premature deaths over time.

"The report also shows that while those living closest to the coal plants typically bear the worst impacts, once those pollutants are in the air they can travel long distances, and impact communities hundreds of miles away," Joyce explained.

Researchers found pollution from America's coal-fired power plants is responsible for 3,800 premature deaths a year.

The report listed PacifiCorp's Jim Bridger facility, operating since the 1970s in southwest Wyoming, as among the nation's most deadly. PacifiCorp has said it will continue operating two of the site's four units at lower capacities to reduce pollution levels, until they are converted to natural gas as early as this year. The other two units will go offline in 2037.

Joyce acknowledged while the transition away from coal-fired electricity will be good for public health, it added economic uncertainty to communities and state agencies deeply tied to the old fossil fuel economy.

"We need to be creative in our approach to prepare for these changes so that families can sustain themselves," Joyce stated. "And also so that the land, water and wildlife that everyone in Wyoming really values can continue to be enjoyed by everyone."

Just 18% of premature deaths from coal occur in the state where the power plants are located, and Wyoming is among the nation's top five exporters of coal-fired air pollution. Joyce added the report exposes just how dangerous the continued use of coal is for communities, public health and the climate crisis.

"The bottom line is that a transition to clean, renewable energy is not only good for combating climate change, but it will also immediately improve public health and save lives," Joyce contended.

Researchers with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine spent two years studying the nation's supply of native seeds, and found significant shortfalls.

A new report shows that in order to respond to climate disruptions and keep ecosystems intact, significant work is needed to bolster seed production and distribution.

Vera Smith, senior federal lands policy analyst with Defenders of Wildlife, said native seeds are critical for post-wildfire rehabilitation and other recovery efforts.

"Our insufficient supply," said Smith, "is a major barrier to ecological restoration and other revegetation projects that we need to do across the nation in order to keep our lands healthy, natural and resilient to climate change."

When seeds from plants that are native to a region impacted by wildfire are not available, nonnative species are planted instead. But these species frequently are not able to adapt and thrive in foreign soils.

If those plants fail to put down roots, rains can erode hillsides and make the recovery of watersheds that people, wildlife and plants depend on much more difficult.

The report calls for concerted action between Tribal Nations and the U.S. Departments of Interior, Agriculture and Defense to build a more robust native seed supply chain as climate change brings more frequent and extreme weather events.

Smith said significant investments, including funding in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, are needed to get the job done.

"They need to build national seed warehouses that can meet their needs," said Smith. "They need to have robust national plant programs, they need to have botanists and ecological restoration specialists on staff."

Native plants are also more drought tolerant than nonnatives. Smith said native seeds and plants are the foundation for healthy ecosystems and the environment.

"And our native wildlife evolved to live with these native plants," said Smith. "It's what they eat, it's what keeps them alive. And if we lose our native flora, we risk losing our native wildlife."




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By Ashira Morris for Reasons to be Cheerful.
Broadcast version by Eric Tegethoff for Washington News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

In science teacher Ali Coker’s sophomore biology class, students became farming activists attending a G7 summit. Coker wove in facts about food insecurity, and by the end of the week, her pupils were writing plans for local crops. The role play was all part of a lesson on food justice and the impacts of climate change on agriculture in the state of Washington, where Coker teaches at Camas High School.

Though Camas High is in a semi-rural region of the state, the topics were new to her students. Still, Coker says, she saw the exercise “activated something inside of them.”

She crafted the lesson based on a year of professional development with Washington state’s ClimeTime. The state education program helps high school teachers introduce climate change and environmental justice into their classrooms by focusing on how the issues are playing out in their backyards. Through seminars and in-person sessions, teachers (who participate voluntarily) become the students — soaking up knowledge from climate scientists, activists and science education professors. 

Before enrolling, Coker says, “I honestly didn’t know what climate justice even meant. I knew about climate change from a scientific perspective. But then learning about the societal systems that go along with that and how different groups of people are impacted disproportionately by climate change — it was a really eye-opening experience.”

With ClimeTime, Washington is the first state in the US to explicitly put money toward K-12 climate change education. But nationally, at least 11 states have pending bills related to climate change education, according to the Campaign for Climate Literacy. Experts say preparing teachers will be key to successful implementation. Washington offers a model for how to fund and carry out that professional development. 

Keeping up with the information

There is no federal mandate to teach climate change, but Washington state follows the Next Generation Science Standards, which has climate science learning benchmarks like monitoring human impact on the environment and connecting climate change to availability of natural resources that teachers must cover. A national assessment of climate education gave the national standards a B+ grade on addressing climate change.

But Washington Gov. Jay Inslee — who has been in office since 2013 and made climate change a central issue — wanted to expand the state’s capability to teach climate topics to students, says Ellen Ebert, Washington’s director of secondary content who started the ClimeTime work. 

Meetings with science education leaders eventually led to state legislators approving $4 million per year starting in 2018-19. Going forward, the funding is one of the many items that must be approved as part of the state’s biennial budget, but it was renewed in 2021 at $3 million annually. It will be in front of legislators again in March. (The funding is shared between the state’s K-12 education network and nonprofit community-based partners working in the climate space.) All resources created with the state dollars are shared on an open education platform — nothing is proprietary. 

ClimeTime’s programs have been successful at boosting teacher confidence on climate topics: Of the nearly 1,000 educators who participated in programming during the 2021-22 school year, 98 percent agreed or strongly agreed that it prepared them with the necessary skills to try something new or different in their professional practice.

The climate justice series Coker participated in started in southwest Washington; in 2022, it expanded statewide. The popular STEM Seminars brings local scientists and other climate leaders to speak with teachers. Coker attended one about flooding in Kelso, which is about 50 miles up the Columbia River from Camas High. Organizers have also brought in researchers from the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group, which collects and disseminates local climate data such as changes in streamflow, snow pack temperature increases, and length of heat waves. 

“A lot of the information that’s available now didn’t exist five years ago, 10 years ago,” says Ebert. “So how is the teacher supposed to keep up with all of the information? When we present it this way, they develop their own toolboxes — and then that’s what they bring back to their colleagues in their schools.”

Coker has stayed involved, helping develop lesson plans and resources to share with other teachers. “I just feel much more supported doing this work,” she says. 

Centering teachers, local impacts

Another key to ClimeTime’s success is its ability to connect climate change impacts to teachers’ and student’s daily lives. 

“One of our most important learnings about creating programs and offerings for teachers with the idea of impacting classroom learning is that it has to be local and relevant,” says Stacy Meyer, a regional science coordinator. “Washington, like many other states, has an incredible amount of diversity just in terms of the landscape and the ecosystems. But that also plays out in terms of political climates and the types of issues that are going to resonate in a particular community.”

In Meyer’s district alone, the terrain ranges from the Pacific coast to the Columbia River Gorge to the Mount St. Helens area. There are large urban centers around Vancouver and rural, agricultural areas, some along the coast, and some up in the forested mountains areas.

She helped organize STEM Seminars on coastal hazards along the ocean, on wildfires in the part of the gorge that had recently suffered through the Eagle Creek fires, and on agriculture in an area full of vineyards. 

People working closely with the program also cite its localized approach with keeping political pushback out at bay. 

Many teachers recognize challenges in talking about climate change in their community but report that the ClimeTime program has given them tools to feel more confident in navigating those conversations, Meyer says.

It also acknowledges the lived experience of students and their families, whether it’s the impacts of poor air quality or changes in agriculture patterns. This is especially true for the ways that climate change and social justice intersect, says Becky Bronstein, a program manager for the nonprofit EarthGen. The organization collaborates with the schools on programming, including the climate justice one that Coker completed. 

“It’s quite evident that in the communities we work with, they are dealing with these issues, their students are dealing with these issues,” Bronstein says. “It’s front of mind and impactful for their livelihoods, for their ability to teach and to learn in a safe and healthy place.”

Climate hope, not climate anxiety

The local focus also helps teachers approach climate change in a way that shows local solutions. For Aubrey Wilson, a science teacher at Wy’east Middle School in Vancouver, ClimeTime has helped her present climate change in a way that makes it relevant to the students, explaining how it’s impacting their local environments — and examples of how local activists are working to take on the problem.

After participating in the climate justice series, Wilson updated her lesson planning to map out her units through the lens of identity, diversity, justice and action. For a recent lesson on the heat island effect, she used data from an actual study of temperatures in the area to show how richer, greener neighborhoods experience lower temperatures than poorer areas with more cement. She then tasked students with designing a city program to build energy-saving homes for unhoused people. 

“Education is an incredible way to combat climate change and issues associated with social injustice,” Bronstein says. “Ensuring that people have the knowledge and understanding of what’s happening is the first step for them to take action. So it’s really important for them to receive that information in a thoughtful way that’s empowering, that gives them agency.”

In the national assessment of climate change education, a lack of opportunities to teach hope was one of the primary critiques of programs that got the climate science right. ClimeTime guides teachers toward presenting opportunities for students to take action based on what they learn.

“We know that if teachers are not very intentional about how they teach about climate change and climate justice that it can lead to climate anxiety, climate grief,” Ebert says. “So we very intentionally wanted teachers to go into this work with a lens of supporting students in feeling empowered — and developing an understanding that action is necessary to feel empowered.”