On April 5, former Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury came to Cleveland to give a presentation on climate change. Bradbury is a native of Chicago, Illinois, but then moved out to the West Coast where he began running for public office.

     Bradbury started out as a state representative from 1981-1995, serving in the Oregon Legislature, representing districts on the southern Oregon coast. After Phil Keisling resigned in 1999, John Kitzhaber appointed Bradbury to be Secretary of State. In 2004 he was reelected for another four years. In 2010, he ran for governor of Oregon, but lost in the primary to eventual winner John Kitzhaber who was, by then, seeking his third term .

     In 2006, while he was serving as the Secretary of State, Bradbury was trained by Al Gore to present climate change information. Since then he has done more than 275 presentations across all of Oregon. Instead of presenting general information about the country or the Earth as a whole, Bradbury has specialized his presentations to make it Oregon specific.

     When Bradbury gave his presentation, it felt like a live version of Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth.” He talked about the extreme weather we had in 2010, which was the warmest year the Earth has ever experienced. In some parts of Pakistan, temperatures got up to 129 degrees and in Moscow, temperatures climbed to more than 100 degrees, which then led to enormous forest fires.

     Bradbury offered suggestions on how to reduce our carbon footprint, including making sure we have energy-efficient heaters in our homes, and together with it, make sure we have modern windows that hold a home’s heat.
     Finally, as a closing statement, Bradbury warned that by the summer of 2015 we could experience the first year with no Arctic ice left.