The bestselling author of Wild and Portland’s reigning Queen of Letters Cheryl Strayed has lent her voice to a new campaign from the Oregon Environmental Council’s Emerging Leaders Board, calling for action on climate change. With a record-setting run of dry days behind us and temperatures still soaring, the campaign's new video, The Time is Now, was launched last week as a call to arms aimed at millennials. 

“This is a story about David versus Goliath, about our health and our planet and a wonderland known as Oregon,” says Strayed in the video. “But this is also a story about large corporations set on turning a profit in exchange for the things that Oregonians love, and what people are doing to fight back.”

The video, by Noah Porter, was released last week in Portland and calls for viewers to “join the climate movement”  and pledge to transition Oregon off coal power and hold high polluters accountable.

The video was created by Oregon Environmental Council’s Emerging Leaders Board, described as “an advisory board of millennial entrepreneurs, strategists, community leaders and visionaries.”

“The Oregon Environmental Council Emerging Leaders Board embraces it as the pivotal issue of our generation," says the board’s spokesperson Corinne Handelman.

"We’re the first generation to experience the effects of climate change, and the last generation that can stop it."

"We're drawing more young professionals into the movement to grow clean energy, encourage efficiency and reduce climate pollution…At times the task seems daunting, but when you step back and look at Oregon’s history as an environmental leader, I’m inspired, and I know we can do it.”