Last year, researchers at Oregon State University led a group of 11,000 scientists worldwide to declare a climate emergency. This week, those same researchers renewed their calls for action. William Ripple, a professor of ecology at OSU, explains why he thinks climate change is a moral issue.

Extremists emboldened by President Donald Trump flooded into the U.S. Capitol building yesterday in an attempt to disrupt the certification of the electoral college. We hear from members of Oregon’s congressional delegation, including Democratic representatives Kurt Schrader and Peter DeFazio, and Republican representative Cliff Bentz.
We also hear from hip hop journalist Mac Smiff, who has been participating in protests against police brutality in Portland, about how the police response to the insurrection in Washington, D.C. differed from what he has seen here. And journalist Leah Sottile talks about the connections between far-right extremism in the Pacific Northwest and the pro-Trump mob at the Capitol.

Portland-based comics journalist Joe Sacco’s new book is an emotionally complex and historically informed portrait of the Dene First Nation people, the indigenous subarctic communities that have lived in what is now known as Canada's Northwest Territories for thousands of years. “Paying the Land” tells how economic and cultural colonialism and residential schools nearly destroyed the Dene’s ancient way of life. It also chronicles the impacts of mining, drilling, and fracking, along with climate change on the land and people. We listen back to a conversation with Joe Sacco that was part of the 2020 Portland Book Festival, put on by Literary Arts.

Before last summer, the nearest ambulance service to the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone Reservation in Malheur County was 74 miles away. That meant if tribal members needed emergency medical care, they’d have to wait and then pay large sums of money in ambulance bills. But in June 2020, Ron Eagleye Johnny started the Fort McDermitt Tribe EMS Rescue, a government-funded service that is based on the reservation. It also serves people in the surrounding area. Johnny joins us to talk about providing emergency medical services in rural Oregon.

Logging in Oregon rakes in billions of dollars annually, but an investigation by OPB, The Oregonian/OregonLive, and ProPublica found that the state has prioritized corporations over its small logging communities and the environment. OPB Reporter Tony Schick fills us in on the investigation.

The city of Hillsboro launched its city-funded broadband internet service in December. Over the next decade, Hillsboro plans to expand the project to establish Oregon’s largest publicly run fiber network. We’ll speak with Hillsboro Mayor Steve Callaway about how rollout is going so far and his vision for HiLight.

In May, a nationwide survey found that Black- and Latinx-owned small businesses struggled to get financial assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent surveys in Marion County by PCUN found that many small business owners of color in the area also faced barriers to accessing aid. Through a grant from the Oregon Latinx Leadership Network, PCUN is offering workshops and stipends for small business owners. Omar Alvarado, advocacy organizer for PCUN, has been leading several workshops. And Lorena Heredia, who owns the business Desi Trucking, has taken workshops through the program. They join us.

After months of congressional disagreement and a last-minute veto threat from President Donald Trump, the federal government passed a new COVID-19 relief bill in late December. There was concern that the bill’s late passage would cause as many as 70,000 Oregonians to see a lapse in benefit payments for the end of December. But the U.S. Department of Labor and Sen. Ron Wyden said benefits won’t lapse after all. We talk with David Gerstenfeld, interim director of the Oregon Employment Department, about when the new relief money will reach Oregonians.

n 2015, the City of Portland passed an affordable housing strategy that was the first of its kind in the nation: It would give preference for housing and home loans to those who’d been displaced from historically Black and now gentrifying neighborhoods in North and Northeast Portland. We check in on the effects of the policy with Leslie Goodlow, the equity business operations manager for the Portland Housing Bureau. And we hear from Gaelan Andrade Booker, who bought his house last year with help from the policy, and Portland Housing Center home buying specialist Shalonda Menefee, who helps people purchase homes using assistance from the policy.

Today we bring you selections of three interviews from this year’s Portland Book Festival. Jon Mooallem talked with John Notarianni about his book “This is Chance: The Shaking of an All-American City, A Voice That Held it Together.” Aida Salazar spoke with Jenn Chavez about her book for middle-grade readers, “Land of Cranes.” And Shayla Lawson spoke with Tiffany Camhi about her book of essays, “This is Major.”