Canopy of Titans: a conversation with authors Jessica Applegate and Paul Koberstein

“An eloquent plea for saving one of North America's last great forests.”
—Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

Canopy of Titans examines the global importance of the Pacific Coastal Temperate Rainforest that stretches from Northern California to Alaska. It catalogs the threats to this vital environmental resource, and it provides readers with easy-to-grasp insights into the value of forests as climate mitigation. The story starts with the wildfires that raged across the American West in the summer of 2020 and ends at the UN Climate Change Conference in November 2021, with many historical flashbacks along the way. The authors pull back the curtain on governmental policies that have seriously diminished the rainforest’s capacity to store carbon, and they uncover industry practices that have led to the destruction of this major ecological resource. Through the lens of environmental justice, the book also shines a light on the indigenous communities that have lived in the rainforest for millennia, and the impact forest policies have had on their lives.

Jessica Applegate has been the managing editor and photographer for Cascadia Times since 2017. She is a founding member of the Eastside Portland Air Coalition and led the campaign to enact the "Cleaner Air Oregon" law, the state’s first-ever air toxics regulations. For the last several years, Jessica has investigated and photographed environmental issues in Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii for Cascadia Times. Her work has been published in several other online and print publications including Sierra Magazine, Mongabay, Truthout, the Progressive, and Earth Island Journal, among others. Jessica holds a master of communication sciences degree from California State, Northridge. She also owns a small-scale organic vineyard in Douglas County, Oregon, and resides in Portland, Oregon.

Paul Koberstein co-founded Cascadia Times in 1995 and has been its editor ever since. A journalist for 40 years, Paul was a staff writer for the Oregonian and Willamette Week in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2004, Paul won the John B. Oakes Award, given annually by Columbia University for the most distinguished environmental journalism in the United States, and in 2016, the Bruce Baer Award, given annually to an Oregon journalist for excellence in investigative journalism. Over the years, Utne Reader has included Cascadia Times twice on its annual list of the best alternative publications in the country. Paul’s articles have been published in the Portland Tribune, Grist, Salon, Truthout, the Progressive, and Earth Island Journal. Paul resides in Portland, Oregon, with his family and dog, Annie.