Search Results
All Results
-
About Us
-
Video: Attaining the Promise
Last month, Sightline’s executive director Alan Durning made the long trek across the country to give a speech at Harvard’s Kennedy School. At the event, The Sustainable Communities Boot Camp—organized by Living Cities and the Institute for Sustainable Communities, leadership teams from 13 US metropolitan areas came together to integrate economic development, transportation and land-use planning, and workforce development. He gave a keynote midway through the conference, entitled “Attaining the...Read more » -
The End of Yellow Pages?
There’s a new national opt-out system for several phone book distributors, presumably the result of pressure, from cities like Portland and Seattle, on phone book deliverers to clean up their act. Color me skeptical—especially because I live in an apartment building that routinely gets a bulk dump of unwelcome on the front doorstep—but, having long ago ceased relying on these paper dinosaurs to look up local businesses, I decided to...Read more » -
Don't Just Reform the Filibuster
Yesterday the 112th Congress kicked off in Washington, DC, and a first order of business in the Senate was a proposal to change a few rules that made getting anything done in that body especially difficult, even when a huge majority was ready. Reforming the filibuster could be one of the most important things the Senate does this month, and Sightline’s Alan Durning and Todd Campbell write in today’s...Read more » -
The Top 10 of 2010
Bikes, buses, bills. The Daily Score churned out more geekery than ever this year, penning more than 450 posts throughout the year that were read about 300,000 times. I thought it would be a fun to take a look back over the past 12 months to see what the most popular posts were. 1. Cargo Bikes: This picto-essay was far and away our most popular post of the year, catching...Read more » -
We're in the Columbian!
Yesterday, the Vancouver Columbian ran an op-ed penned by Sightline executive director Alan Durning and speech writer/community volunteer Todd Campbell. Here’s a taste: [W]hile times are tough, I-1053 is just the latest ill-considered and undemocratic initiative from Eyman that promotes corporate special interests at the expense of essential citizen services like schools, roads, medical care and clean water. If I-1053 really were a grass-roots movement to protect citizen’s pocketbooks, you...Read more » -
Who’ll Stop the Rain?
It’s so satisfying to be able to promote a pro-environment stance that’s also sweet for the money-crunching bottom line. Especially when the audience for that pitch is Washington’s business community. That’s what Sightline chieftain Alan Durning and I got to do in an editorial about stormwater for Seattle Business magazine that’s out now. The editorial makes the case that low-impact development is the cheapest, smartest, and most environmentally beneficial way...Read more » -
A Bridge Across the Sustainability Gap?
I have called out elected officials who support the idea of big carbon reductions but end up supporting huge highway projects. Now I am calling out Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder—a very close friend of Sightline and a personal friend of Alan Durning—for falling into the Sustainability Gap. Burkholder supports reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 25 percent of 1990 levels by 2050. But he also supports the CRC project, a multibillion...Read more » -
Cantwell's Climate Bill Gathers Steam
There’s an interesting insurgency that may give lie to recent predictions of federal failure on cap and trade. Senator Maria Cantwell from Washington has a modified “cap and dividend” bill, called the CLEAR Act, that’s slowly but surely picking up momentum. On Wednesday, the Washington Postgave it a nod: Is there no alternative between simple do-nothingism and House complexity? In fact, there is. An alternative proposal increasingly capturing interest on Capitol Hill is...Read more » -
A Success Story Waiting To Happen: Financing Retrofits For All
Why does energy efficiency matter? Jobs—Comprehensive energy efficiency retrofits to existing buildings can create thousands of new jobs in Washington State, reduce carbon emissions, and at the same time save money for struggling families and small businesses alike. How many jobs? A Washington State University analysis found that retrofitting 1 million homes in Washington could create 43,000 new jobs across the state—reducing the unemployment rate by more than a percentage...Read more »
