ABSTRACT

This chapter examines how the movement responsible for the Portland energy policy was formed and structured. Portland's municipal energy policy was a major achievement. Not only did it establish conservation as a priority and provide mechanisms for achieving it, it addressed the entire energy system. Seizing on the relatively obvious problems with the Pacific Northwest energy system, activists succeeded in opening up a political terrain in which the broader impacts of human beings upon their environment could be discussed and addressed. Longer-term, the energy policy provided some of the conditions for taking 'local action' on other issues of broad concern. The chapter links the social movement responsible for Portland's energy policy to its major conditions of possibility. As the system expanded from a few major dams to a system of over 400 generating stations, it nourished the idea of a distinct regional environment and brought the lives of people in cities like Portland into relationship with it.