Locus Focus

It's been a rocky and rolling six weeks since we talked with George Polisner,

a former senior executive at Oracle who very publicly resigned from the

company after its CEO enthusiastically joined the Trump transition team in

January. Since quitting Oracle George has devoted...

Oregon is celebrated for its leadership on addressing climate change. This

winter the Portland City Council unanimously approved a first-in-the-country

ban on new bulk fossil fuel storage facilities that exceed two million

gallons as well as the expansion of existing termin...

On February 17 the U.S. Senate confirmed Scott Pruitt as the new EPA

administrator. This is a man who denies climate change is real. As the

attorney general of Oklahoma he sued the EPA fourteen times, while using

talking points written by energy lobbyists to publicly attack...

It's hard not to be disheartened by the news everyday coming from the

Trump-occupied White House. But one way to stay energized is to resist at the

local level.

As the Trump Administration's federal policies look to favor the fossil fuel

industry, state and local authority...

There are a lot of things that are inconceivable about Donald Trump, but

the incoherence of his energy policy is especially mind boggling. He’s

likely to wind up angering a lot of his key supporters in the fossil fuel

industry, because some of his moves, such as resuscitati...

Since 2005, when Congress passed a federal mandate to blend corn-based

ethanol and other renewable fuels into conventional gasoline, the increased

demand for corn – which has supplied nearly all of these mandated fuels to

date – has resulted in a major transformation of the...

In 1992, in a remote mountain range, a team of scientists discovered the

remains of an unusual animal with beautiful long horns. It turned out to be a

living species new to western science - a saola, the first large land mammal

discovered in 50 years.

Rare then and rarer n...

In December Donald Trump met with the CEOs of several high tech companies,

including Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle. After Catz was quoted before joining the

Trump transition team as saying: “I plan to tell the President-elect that

we are with him and are here to help in any way...

America's electrical grid, an engineering triumph of the twentieth century,

is turning out to be a poor fit for the present. It's not just that the grid

has grown old and is now in dire need of basic repair. Today, as we invest

great hope in new energy sources--solar, wind,...

As this year draws to a painful close, amidst all the political debris, we

can look back at some major environmental successes. Communities across the

Pacific Northwest have stopped proposals to build coal terminals in

Washington and Oregon, a giant methanol refinery in Tac...