Barbara Bernstein

After a week of snow and ice, massive power outages and Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, how do we move ahead to implement the progressive agenda so many of us are craving? While we wait to see—and how to influence—what comes from Washington, DC, there is a lot to a... Read more

Now that Joe Biden is president and democrats narrowly control the Senate and the House is it a new day for America, and for Portland? On this episode of Locus Focus, we talk with Portland Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, now the longest serving commissioner, besides Mayor Ted... Read more

For over sixteen years the threat of a massive LNG export terminal at Coos Bay, fed by a 230 mile 36” wide gas pipeline snaking across five counties, loomed over Southern Oregon. Then on January 19, this project received its quite likely death blow, when the Federal Energy ... Read more

In a remarkable turn of events last week, the Washington State Department of Ecology denied a crucial permit for the world's largest methanol refinery, proposed for Kalama, Washington. People in Kalama have been fighting this methanol refinery for seven years, joined by act... Read more

We started out this new year hoping it would offer some respite after the ravages of 2020.  Instead we witnessed a terrorist attack at the Capitol and a second impeachment of Donald Trump. But the day before Trump slunk away to Florida and Joe Biden became the 46th presiden... Read more

While much of the public, and many politicians, believe that high-severity fires destroy wildlife habitat and promote insect infestations, the science proves otherwise. But this false assumption that fire and insects are destructive to wildlife is providing the underlying b... Read more

It’s hard to decide what was the most unbelievable event of 2020, in a year that never relented with terrifying surprises. There have been many moments when it felt that things will never be as they were, especially as the impacts of climate chaos grow more and more dramati... Read more

  THIS PROGRAM AIRED ORIGINALLY ON OCTOBER 19, 2020 This past October I had the wonderful opportunity to chat with Northwest environmental writer, poet, novelist and butterfly expert, Robert Michael Pyle, about  his new book Nature Matrix. We had a free-wheeling conversat... Read more

So the electoral college has met and elected Joe Biden president, and Mitch McConnell has finally congratulated Biden. After a close brush with the end of democracy in America, is all well now? Or does this close call actually amplify all the weaknesses and undemocratic fea... Read more