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Nice: apparently, northwesterners are living longer than ever! And it’s not just that elderly patients are eking out a few extra miserable months in the intensive care unit before dying of old age. Nope—death rates are falling at pretty much every stage of life, from infancy, through teenage years and middle age, and into the senior years. The big drops in death over the last decade have been in heart disease,...

As the work to carry the good news about Referendum 52 out to local school districts gets underway some reasonable questions have arisen about the impact of R52 on local school districts and how it works. Let’s take a quick run through some questions that have come up. Will the passage of Referendum 52 affect my school district’s bond rating or the state’s rating? No. Both the state and local...

Here’s a case for saving Puget Sound that you can take to the bank. The Sound and the land, rivers, and lakes surrounding it provide benefits worth $9.7 billion and $83 billion every year, according to a new study called “Valuing the Puget Sound Basin” from Earth Economics, a local nonprofit. The overall worth of the region is pegged at $305 billion and $2.6 trillion. How does this hardworking watershed...

Editor’s note: The following post is by Sightline communications intern Michelle Venetucci Harvey. Keep an eye out for more posts from her in coming months.  An uprising against city roosters might be just what the urban agriculture movement needs. Confused? Stay with me. When Seattle Mayor McGinn declared 2010 the “Year of Urban Agriculture” back in April, some folks worried that the result would be little more than some brown...

I don’t make a habit of hanging out on conservative websites. Honest! But this morning I landed on an article by Michael Barone of the American Enterprise Institute called “The Return of the Jeffersonian Vision and the Rejection of Progressivism.” Barone’s essay—which paints progressive politics as anti-Jeffersonian—presents a big, fat, juicy target for those of us who see government as a part of the solution to our shared problems, rather...

Seattle City Councilmember Mike O’Brien unearthed an interesting chart from the Washington Department of Transportation, showing that the state estimates that there’s a 40 percent chance that the tunnel project will go over budget… That’s just the tunnel, mind you.  It doesn’t include the other $1.15 billion slated for other parts of the project.  That said, the tunnel—particularly the boring itself—carries the biggest technical and fianancial risks. There are a...

In researching energy saving school retrofits I have found some common issues affecting K-12 school funding in British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. Everyone knows that funds are limited. But what’s interesting is that the limitation is aggravated by the complex dynamics between local, state, and provincial politics and economics. There isn’t any one easy fix for the many challenges facing our schools when it comes to paying for education. But...

The chess game of climate politics in Cascadia—or, more specifically, of putting a binding limit on climate-changing pollution from dirty fuels—is at a moment of great uncertainty. President Obama continues to push for putting a price on carbon, and Senate action may come in July or August. But there’s every chance that a US climate law (which would trigger Canadian action and advance Northwest sustainability more than any other single...

Last December, Eric and Alan co-authored an article in the Tyee calling for Pay-As-You-Drive car insurance in British Columbia. One reader was so inspired, he made this six-minute video encouraging viewers to sign a petition to bring PAYD to BC:   It’s definitely worth a watch. A good rundown on the benefits of PAYD, and the challenges it faces. Live in BC? Help spread the word.

For immediate release: June 30, 2010 Media contact:  Eric Hess, erich@sightline.org, 206-447-1880 x 109 Authors: Eric de Place, eric@sightline.org, 206-447-1880 x 105 Clark Williams-Derry, clark@sightline.org, 206-447-1880 x 106 Brief summary: We’re using more gas. Drivers in the Northwest states of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington used more gasoline last year, reversing a decade-long trend of declining personal gas consumption. Per capita consumption increased slightly in 2009, while total consumption rose by 2 percent. Lower fuel...