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Moving this post up to feature a 40 minute live segment on KBOO, a community radio station based in Portland, that I did this morning. You can listen to it here. Barbara Bernstein’s show, Locus Focus, is a rare format that actually allows enough time to dig into a subject matter in some depth. So if you want more detail on the state of climate policy than I’ve provided in this post, it’s a...

We face sustainability choices every day: paper or plastic? Drive or take the bus? Fresh or frozen fish? It seems like one week a new study comes out claiming X is better than Y, and a week later Y is better than X. How are we to know what to believe? And more importantly, which choices are the ones that really matter? For years, Sightline has sought to clear the...

Earlier this week we learned that Tesoro—an oil refiner with nasty politics and a rap sheet a mile long — will be facing a criminal investigation for the April explosion at its Anacortes, Washington facility that killed seven workers and earned it the largest L&I fine in state history for “willful disregard of safety regulations.” Then yesterday, the Tesoro refinery in Martinez, California (about 45 minutes northeast of San Francisco) had another major flare-up. Plumes of...

Following on Clark’s post from yesterday, here’s a rare bit of good news for anyone concerned about bisphenol-A (BPA). With a small kiddo in my house, I’ve gone to a fair amount of trouble to limit our exposure to BPA. I’ve sworn off canned food, bought glass storage containers and tried to make sure most of the plastic that goes in her mouth is BPA-free. But I’ve been minorly plagued...

The Sustainability Gap—the annoying tendency of some politicians to talk big about sustainability but do the opposite when it comes to policy—is a term that has gotten some play recently. To be honest, though, I think it is still pretty tough for sustainability advocates to get mad at their local politicians who make lousy decisions that have a deleterious effect on climate or water or energy. It’s hard to say...

I like the new trend that assigns bird characteristics to elected officials to identify their stance on energy and climate policy—and with new birds flocking to DC and state capitols after Tuesday’s election, it’s high time we figure out what species they are. Thanks to David Roberts at Grist there are Climate Hawks (a term gaining some significant traction). Thanks to Center for American Progress, there are also Climate Peacocks....

Oregon has been having a robust debate over the appropriate date for closing the state’s lone coal power plant. The Boardman plant could theoretically operate until 2040, but its owners have proposed an earlier closure to avoid investing in expensive pollution controls. There’s been a lot of discussion about whether the plant should close in 2015 or 2020 (and how much its owners must spend in the meantime.) But that...

Almost everyone thinks parking is a problem; either there is too much of it or too little; it’s too expensive or too cheap; it promotes auto-dependence or it promotes the success of retail business. And slap a tax on parking and fireworks are sure to follow. In fact, Seattle has recently started a debate about increasing its Commercial Parking Tax (CPT) by 5 percent to a total of 15 percent...

Oil refiner Tesoro has upped its contributions to Tim Eyman’s undemocratic I-1053 to $90,000 since we last checked. (BP maintains the lead at $100,000, according to our review of the state Public Disclosure Commission’s online database.) Texas-based Tesoro has the gall to call itself a responsible corporate citizen. “Social responsibility is an integral part of our business practices—as well as our corporate culture. This is a responsibility, and a promise, we...

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Richard Florida about the changing demographics of cities has me thinking again about how to rid our language of the term ‘suburb.’ Florida’s article points out that many of the cities we have typically called suburbs are transforming themselves from sprawling, car-centric and far-flung places into compact, transit-oriented, and walkable communities. These cities are also experiencing a shift in demographics that...