I wasn’t sure I was going to write this Blog Action Day about climate change, and not because I don’t believe it is the single most important environmental issue facing us today. I do.

I don’t have anything to say that hasn’t already been said.

But I can point Oregonians to an an important issue that’s been in our backyards for years and years: PGE’s Boardman power plant and the fact that it is “the largest stationary source of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides in the state.” PGE and DEQ have been dancing for years to keep Boardman’s status quo.

Now go read Steve Duin’s article in the October 3 issue of The Oregonian. And then watch how the environmental lawsuit — claiming PGE should be responsible for cleaning up 35-year old technology — goes in the next round. The last round went to clean air: the court says it can hear the case.

Read one young environmentalist’s account of a recent Boardman plant tour. Nick Engelfried says,

The great challenge of my generation will be to make the transition away from fossil fuels as just and equitable as possible – to help those who have built their livelihoods around coal plants make the jump to a new era, while recognizing that we cannot keep burning coal simply to preserve specific jobs.  When at last we make this transition successfully, the economy is going to be a much safer one for working-class people than the old.

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Additional sources:

Northwest Environmental Defense Council
Oregon Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility
10 Things you can do to reduce global warming
Buy power that uses renewable sources. Here’s PGE’s list.