Democratic leaders are aiming to pass cap and trade in 2019, making Oregon just the second state to adopt the major climate policy. But some activists say lawmakers and Gov. Kate Brown aren’t thinking big enough. They want an “Oregon Green New Deal.”

Sewage sludge: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) euphemistically calls it “biosolids.” But what is it really? And why should you care?

As an article from In These Times explains, sewage sludge is:

. . . whatever goes into the sewer system and emerges as solids from municipal wastewater treatment plants. Sludge can be (its exact composition varies and is not knowable) any of the 80,000 synthetic chemicals used by industry; new chemicals created from combining two or more of those 80,000; bacteria and viruses; hospital waste;

On Congress’s the first day back to work after the November 2018 election, hundreds of young people with the Sunrise Movement  lined up outside the office of House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.

They were there to demand a Green New Deal. 

The protesters carried envelopes stuffed full of thousands of letters from other young people. One by one, they filed into Pelosi’s office. Some gave short speeches as they delivered their demands. The 51 of them who sat down in Pelosi’s office and refused to leave were arrested.

When it was her turn to speak, Sophia Zaia from

This was the year that longtime dairy farmer Jim Goodman decided to call it quits. The third-generation farmer from Wonewoc, Wisconsin, milked cows for more than four decades.  He loved the animals and the work, and had endured hard times, but the most recent downturn in dairy farming – now in its fourth year — was one of the worst he'd seen.