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Here at Sightline, we’ve been tracking the ups and downs of the Selkirk Mountains caribou herd, a tiny population of the most endangered large mammal in North America. They would be outnumbered by the kids in two large kindergarten classes, or the baseball players suiting up for a major league game. The numbers are so low that each year biologists in planes or helicopters scan the mountains of Idaho, Washington,...

There are few things we take more for granted than the air we breathe. But even when our air seems okay, poor air quality can affect mood and behavior as well as overall health. Poor air quality—especially for kids—can increase asthma attacks and susceptibility to flu as well as contributing to inattention and lethargy. The culprits for unhealthy indoor air are most often high concentrations of CO2 and the presence...

A few weeks back, Vancouver, BC-based urban planner Zach Shaner posted a comparison of bus transit service in Seattle and Vancouver.  Shaner’s basic claim—that Vancouver’s bus service just works better than Seattle’s—is hard to dispute. A few years ago I reached the same conclusion, based on the fact that  TransLink, BC’s transit agency, provided far more bus rides per capita than did greater Seattle’s. But while I totally agree with...

This seems like a big deal: BC Hydro [the province’s electric utility] is offering to pay its industrial customers up to 100 per cent of the cost of energy-efficient investments under $1 million, and up to 75 per cent of the cost of projects over $1 million… “”We’re spending $80 million, but…[o]verall, the program has a net benefit of $120 million compared with the cost of purchasing new electricity supply.”...

UPDATE 6/16/10: Wrong again. The NYT says that it’s much higher than was believe just last week: A government panel on Tuesday released yet another estimate of the amount of oil flowing from BP’s damaged well, declaring that as much as 60,000 barrels a day could be spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. That is roughly 2.5 million gallons of oil a day, and it means an amount equal to...

When Sightline fan Matt the Engineer recently built a new garage at his Seattle home, he really wanted to put a deck on top of it. But city regulations prevented the fulfillment of his wish (there’s a ban on rooftop decks near alleys, the logic of which eludes me). Being a solutions-oriented fellow (he musta gotten that from us), Matt came up with an alternative. He built an ecoroof. Now Matt’s...

Let me start out by saying that I was a philosophy major in college. I never took a finance course or spent a bunch of time running numbers on Wall Street. But as a citizen and someone who is concerned generally about the common good I have had to learn a fair amount about public finance. So there you have it: caveat lector.  Nicole Gelinas is author of a very...

Ecoroofs with their fuzzy fescues and plump sedums might seem like a quaint, perhaps even self-indulgent display of one’s environmental bonafides, the instantly recognizable, Prius equivalent of the roofing realm. But it turns out that living roofs offer more than green window dressing. According to Northwest-specific research, ecoroofs significantly reduce stormwater runoff and their insulating properties cut energy use. Additionally, though more difficult to quantify, the roofs provide plants and...

In Portland, green roofs have moved so far beyond enviro-novelty that the city is actually paying its residents to cap their homes and businesses in living roofs. Residents there are encouraged to apply for refunds of up to $5 a square foot for roofs that are covered in dirt and planted with grasses and sedums. But that’s only the capper to Portland’s widespread support of green roofs. In March, the...

Today is a good day for an energy policy reality check. Because today we are in a place where the environmentally responsible choice is lighting a giant oil slick on fire. And that really is the best option available to us right now. That’s how bad the situation in the Gulf of Mexico is. It is yet another horrifying example of the broken—and I would say morally bankrupt — energy system that Americans remain shackled to thanks...