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Earlier this year the Seattle City Council made achieving “carbon neutrality” one of its top goals. Now they have to figure out how to deliver on it. Tonight the council’s hosting a carbon neutrality community forumto get ideas about how to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions. Seattle is the only Northwest city that I’m aware of having made carbon neutrality one of its prime priorities, though Portland has a...

Our sources tell us Portland has the secret formula for going “green.” And, over the next three weeks, Sightline is seeking out one lucky northwesterner (and guest) for a three-day spy mission to the City of Roses to snoop around for sustainability solutions. This all-expenses-paid operation may seem more like a vacation, but someone’s got to do it! Are you ready to go undercover? Sign up for Sightline’s daily or...

When readers ask for charts, I can’t refuse! So, as an accompaniment to my previous analysis of income taxes in Washington’s “neighbor” states, here’s a more thorough examination. I’ve calculated the tax burden—for both single and joint filers—under Initiative 1098 in Washington along with the state’s four nearest neighbors. I used annual income in half million dollar increments up to $2 million. Have a look. The upshot is pretty clear,...

Minority rule sounds bad enough in theory: undemocratic, unconstitutional, and unfair. But in practice, its ramifications become even worse. If Washington voters approve BP-funded and Tim Eyman-sponsored I-1053 in November, just 17 members of the Washington Senate will hold veto power over closing tax loopholes and raising revenue. Who are those 17? In principle, it could be any 17 senators, but in reality, it would be the 17 most conservative...

Trulia, an online “real estate search engine,” has just released some really compelling charts and graphs illustrating recent opinion research showing what they suggest might be the end of the McMansion—the huge, mass produced, housing form associated with sprawl. Their data, together with the drop in lot sizes for single family homes I wrote about last month, might be pointing to a slackening in the demand for homes with lots...

A recent study—Public perceptions of energy consumption and savings—conducted by researchers at Columbia University, Ohio State University and Carnegie Mellon University found two broad categories of energy saving actions people could take, curtailment actions and efficiency actions. Curtailment actions—turning the heat off or down—were seen as saving the most energy, while efficiency actions—installing insulation or a new boiler—were seen as saving less energy. It’s actually the other way around. The...

I’ve been reading more lately about Washington State’s constitution. The summer of 1889 was an eventful one around these parts. The great fire burned a large portion of Seattle to the ground and Washington became a state. Since the fire Seattle has been rebuilt, expanded, and thoroughly revised and updated with a bus tunnel, light rail, and skyscrapers. The population of the state was 357,232 according to the 1890 census...

Walk Score–the popular website measuring your community’s walkability—rolled out a whole ton of new features today. Most notably, you can now get your “Transit Score,” a glimpse of how well your neighborhood is serviced by public transit. The results can be surprising. My apartment in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood boasts a Walk Score of 97—a true “Walker’s Paradise.” But the same address only generates a Transit score of 53. It looks...

There’s a lot of talk about the socio-economic privilege required to participate in alternative food movements. From Whole Foods’ nickname of “Whole Paycheck” to the lack of government subsidies going towards organic food, healthy eating is often considered an elitist luxury. So when efforts are made to cross the bridge between underprivileged communities and access to healthy food, it’s time to put down your locally-grown carrot for a minute and...

Nope, it’s not that. This is why we’re fat: A group of researchers at the UW’s Center for Public Health Nutrition tracked the cost of roughly 380 food items over the course of four years…The price of healthy food—produce and whole grains, among other things—rapidly outpaced the price of items like soda and jelly beans. “That’s not a good pattern,” said lead researcher Pablo Monsivais. “Already, the foods that are the...