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Update 12/30: I corrected some inaccuracies in the original version. Updated12/30, part 2: Over at Slog, Erica Barnett politely takes issue with this post and has some smart ideas to improve the plan. My reply is below the jump. Seeing as how this year’s holiday overeating falls on the eve of a national health care debate, I give you an interesting idea from the land of all things deep-fried: …the Alabama State Employees’...

Fifteen years ago this Autumn, a 28-year-old researcher names Alan Durning lugged a refurbished library table into the cramped bedroom closet of his Seattle home, drilled a phone line through the wall, and filed the legal papers to create a nonprofit research institute. We’ve come a long way since 1993, but our overarching goal remains the same: to arm change-makers with the independent research, ideas, and tools they need to...

In Retrofits for All, I described an ingenious plan for extending retrofits to whole neighborhoods of energy-wasting buildings. Today, I want to take another look at one piece of that puzzle: financing. Energy conservation loans sound eminently reasonable: the loans pay for energy upgrades and, as long as the energy savings are bigger than the loan payments, property owners come out ahead (as do the climate and the local job...

Sightline’s greatest achievements over 15 years.

In an uncharacteristic fit of virtue I recently vowed to start eating better. Among other things, this means I’m stocking the freezer so that I don’t get lured by the wealth of take-out in my ‘hood. In fact, I even bought a chest freezer so that I’d have a place to stash all food I’m making (and buying). Naturally, I did a bit of research before buying, but apparently not enough. I...

The Associated Press reports plans for a massive new green-collar federal stimulus package: Obama has also embraced calls for a “green jobs” program that invests as much as $100 billion in projects to slash harmful emissions. This could include projects such as retrofitting buildings to make them more energy-efficient, upgrading the electrical grid and improving mass transit. “It turns out that putting money into green technologies … has a very...

Now that the Olympic Peninsula is teeming with vampires, it hardly seems unreasonable to reintroduce wolves back to the region. I guess I’m not the only one who feels that way. The Peninsula Daily News reports that a public meeting last year was packed with wolf supporters: SEQUIM – A crowd of North Olympic Peninsula residents told state Department of Fish and Wildlife officials that gray wolves belong in Washington state – maybe...

Update: A version of this post appeared in Real Change News. Let’s say, just hypothetically, that Washington were facing a ginormous budget shortfall. And let’s also say that the state had made an ambitious — but mostly unfunded—commitment to cleaning up Puget Sound. That would be a real pickle. But do you know what I’d do? I’d levy a tax on the cruise industry, that’s what. Washington’s cruise ships are only...

There’s a lot to write about today.  But I’ll save the grand speechifying, and point to one delightful election result on a ballot measure that we’ve been watching very closley. Washington State’s Initiative I-985 had so many problems, it’s hard to know where to begin.  It was billed as a measure to fight traffic congestion, yet I-985 was drafted with absolutely no guidance from competent, knowledgeable transportation engineers.  As a...

By now you’ve probably noticed we’ve been talking a bit about Vancouver over the last couple weeks. That’s because we’re giving away a free three-day trip for two to BC, just for signing up for Sightline Daily emails. If you haven’t signed up already, tomorrow will be your last chance to get in on the action. You’ll still be able to sign up for Sightline Daily’s email news service—where our...