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Let’s be honest--the state of the climate emergency can be downright overwhelming and difficult to face day after day. A recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) paints an especially bleak picture: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere,…

In 2020, Oregon became the 4th state to phase-out the organophosphate insecticide, chlorpyrifos. This law came about as a result of a 2-year legislative campaign led by Beyond Toxics to ban the use of chlorpyrifos. We fought for a complete ban, and we knew a phase-out was not enough. Today we celebrate the EPA’s August…

Throughout history, the Siuslaw River was a vital watershed with salmon populations “second only to the Columbia.” Colonization of Oregon changed this––unsustainable fishing was practiced, natural buffers for streams were removed for logging, and the Siuslaw was polluted. Historically, there was an average of 260,000 coho salmon returning to the Siuslaw in one year, but…

“I’m from the coast.” “I own a farm.” “My family have been ranchers for five generations.” Our sense of ourselves is integrated with the way we own and use land.

We face a future full of challenges about the health of our communities and the impacts of a warming climate. Of the many intersections between environmental justice, health and climate change, one that is often overlooked is pesticide use. At the most basic level of fossil fuel production reductions, pesticides are petrochemicals – toxic chemicals…

We face a future full of challenges about the health of our communities and the impacts of a warming climate. Of the many intersections between environmental justice, health and climate change, one that is often overlooked is pesticide use.

Beyond Toxics does not shy away from tough issues. It takes time, tenacity and creativity to solve problems. For example, we are in our second year of fighting to stop the use of chlorpyrifos in Oregon. We’ve presented two bills that got caught up and swept away by the Republican walk-outs in 2019 and 2020.…

“I can’t breathe!” One man’s dying words, choked to death by a Minneapolis police officer, has become the rallying cry of our era. As George Floyd’s murder galvanized some of the largest and sustained protests in United States history, a respiratory pandemic swept through the world. Masked protestors surged in the streets, demanding a world…

Teams from Beyond Toxics and the NAACP Eugene/Springfield came together in 2018 to start the process of organizing an Environmental Justice Pathways (EJP) Summit. The agenda we had prepared was jam packed with amazing speakers from throughout the state of Oregon and abroad.