Daily Digest: Texas kicking Cascadia's ass on renewables but we'll fight wildfires together
Good morning and welcome to your fact-filled news source for fighting fascism across Cascadia! I'm trying to reach a goal of 50 subscriber by the end of May. It's only $5 a month – the cost of latte. Thanks for helping out!
Cascadia is dead last building renewable energy
A detailed report from OPB in collaboration with ProPublica finds that Oregon and Washington rank at the very bottom of US states in building new wind and solar energy projects in past decade. Much of this has to do with stalled boosting of transmission lines but also, it's a lazy dependence on hydro power, which has become less reliable. "Texas is kicking our ass," said one Oregon legislator. Come on, Cascadia – do better. Trump's proposed cuts to the Bonneville Power Administration won't help Cascadia's power grid either. Last year, for Columbia Insight I wrote about how BPA, in its effort to expand power lines, uses a ton of pesticides.
Cascadia teams up to fight wildfires
In a fantastic sign of cross-border cooperation, the states and provinces of Cascadia have created the Northwest Compact to pool resources to address wildfires driven by climate change, Salish Currents reports. That's good news considering the bad news: that Cascadia is expecting a very dry, bad fire season this summer, OPB reports.
BC academics avoid conferences south of the border
CBC reports on how academics in British Columbia and across Canada are saying no to conferences in the US because of increasingly menacing border interrogations by customs officials – one trans professor at Simon Fraser, who goes by the one name of Travers, actually created their own conference to avoid crossing the border. Meanwhile, residents of Point Roberts – that weird quirk of the 49th parallel in which a US town is totally connected to British Columbia, have seen cross-border business plummet.
BC's representation all over the map
The Tyee reports on how a newly-elected Liberal MP in Vancouver, Wade Grant is of the Musqueam Indian Band, but the same neighborhood is represented in the legislature by someone who has mocked victims of the residential school system. And CBC reports that the left-leaning NDP has appointed an MP from Vancouver, Don Davies, as interim leader after Jagmeet Singh stepped down following a huge defeat in Canada's federal election.
What are you doing for Cascadia Day? 🇱🇸
May 18th, the day Mount St Helens erupted in 1980, is the unofficial Cascadia Day – a time to fly your Doug flags, learn more about the bioregion and celebrate this beautiful place we live in. Looking for a way to celebrate this weekend? One suggestion: a community potluck and poetry reading on Saturday, May 17 at the Georgetown Steam Plant in Seattle sponsored by Regenerate Cascadia and the Cascadia Poetry Festival, with readings by Robert Lashley, Claudia Castro Luna and Paul Nelson. Should be fun, sadly I'll be in California watching my daughter's college graduation (but also, yay!)
--Andrew Engelson