News items for April 19, 2024
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1. Aging solutions = climate solutions
Adapting communities to better serve growing elderly populations also makes those places more climate-resilient. A new book charts the path to making this connection.
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2. Seattle deserves a better comp plan
The city can make three critical fixes to its 20-year growth plan: Let middle housing be bigger, allow apartment buildings in more places, and legalize car-free homes everywhere.
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3. Plans for WA’s largest wind farm slashed in half
The project faced broad opposition from the jump and over the last three years became mired in Washington’s permitting process. Ultimately, a little-known, endangered hawk emerged as the linchpin to the whole deal.
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4. Biden limits oil drilling across 13 million acres of Alaskan Arctic
The Interior Department also announced that it will block a road crucial to accessing a planned copper and zinc mine in northern Alaska.
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5. OR could place limits on river trash, ocean acidification
Trash dumped into stretches of the Willamette River between Salem and the Columbia River has gotten so bad that local agencies may need to come up with ways to address it.
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6. Land under BLM management to get new protections
The measure from the Bureau of Land Management elevates conservation in a number of ways, including by creating new leases for the restoration of degraded areas.
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7. National debate on handling homelessness shines spotlight on Grants Pass
In Grants Pass, a fierce fight over park space has become a battleground for a much larger, national debate on homelessness that has reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The town’s case, set to be heard Monday, has broad implications for how communities nationwide address homelessness, including whether they can fine or jail people for camping in public.
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8. When dams come down, what happens to the ocean?
A long-term study of the Elwha River Delta reveals lasting change—and a healthier ecosystem.
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9. At UN conference, Indigenous peoples say little has changed in a decade
In 2014, global leaders negotiated an agreement loaded with promises like respecting Indigenous peoples’ contributions to ecosystem management and working with them to address the effects of extractive industries. To date, however, little has been accomplished.
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10. Views: Climate changes’ hidden costs are the most damaging
The devastation wreaked by climate change comes not just from headline-grabbing catastrophes but also from the subtler accumulation of slow and unequal burns. These are nearly invisible costs that, in their pervasiveness and inequality, may be much more harmful than commonly realized.