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An update on this. Last week’s national elections in Canada were bad, but not horrible, news for supporters of carbon tax shifting. And they give me a little comfort about the provincial carbon tax shift already in place. To review for our American readers, Stephane Dion, leader of the center-left federal Liberal Party (not the same political hue as the provincial Liberals), ran on a platform that included a proposal...

Editor’s note: In honor of our “Escape to Vancouver” Sweepstakes, we’re “recycling” one of our most popular posts. Sign up for Sightline Daily emails between now and October 29 and you, too, could experience a car-less vacation to Vancouver, BC!   Our car-less family vacation in Vancouver, BC, was a big success. Here’s a full report, for those of you who shared your own car-lessvacation stories and are interested in...

Editor’s note: During our three-week “Escape to Vancouver” campaign to increase the readership of Sightline Daily, we’ll be running a short blog series spotlighting Vancouver, BC, and its contributions to Cascadia. Clark Williams-Derry weighs in first. As you should know by now, we’re offering an all-expense paid trip to Vancouver, BC, as a sweepstakes reward to one lucky reader who gets their friends to sign up for a Sightline Daily...

Update 10/20: Crosscut has a version of this post. What happened to the Olympic Peninsula after its wolves were hunted to extinction in the 1920s? There’s a fascinating new study (pdf) out on this question—the first of its kind as far as I know. As it turns out, eliminating this one keystone species sent shockwaves through the whole ecosystem. Some of the effects were felt almost immediately after wolves were extirpated and...

Oregon’s Measure 63—a mosquito-bite version of the old Measure 37 plague—is not managing to make a lot of friends. Here’s a look at what newspapers around the state are saying. It isn’t pretty: The Albany Democrat-Heraldrecommends voting no: …it sounds good. But it is baloney… Building codes exist for a reason, even though sometimes they are a pain. The reason is fire and life safety. And the permit process is...

If you haven’t noticed, Sightline tends to hold Vancouver, BC as a champion for smart policy and good ideas (heck, they even live longer). You’ve also probably noticed that we love car-free vacations. Well, how about this: We’re giving away a car-free trip to our favorite walkable Northwest city and you—as a Daily Score blog reader—are a prime candidate to enter. Here’s the deal: From today until October 29, if...

In my post last Fall on Rob Lowe’s plug-in hybrid, I argued that in the absence of a cap on greenhouse gas emissions, switching to plug-in hybrids might actually be worse for the climate than just switching to regular hybrids. I no longer believe that. Electric vehicles are winners for the climate in the Northwest. My argument then, based on research at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), was that...

According to a study released today by the US Conference of Mayors, green jobs “could be the fastest-growing segment of the United States economy over the next several decades and dramatically increase its share of total employment.” As the Seattle P-I reports, Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, the conference’s president, said the report makes “a very compelling economic argument for investing in the green economy and that we’re going to get...

Earlier this year, UW researcher Theo Eicher dropped a bombshell study purporting to show that regulation was responsible for adding $200,000 to the price of an average Seattle house. It was shocking. It landed on the front page of the Seattle Times. At the time, I believed the study couldn’t possible be right. And I wrote three blog posts about it: here, here, and here. Among other things, I worried...

This is curious. Washington state initiative-mogul Tim Eyman is known for writing ballot measures that appeal to eastern Washington residents, but give western Washingtonians—particularly in greater Seattle—a sharp poke in the eye. This election season, though, Eyman has thrown his usual tactics into reverse.  His new ballot measure, called Initiative 985 (or I-985 to the…er…initiated), is ostensibly targeted at a problem that’s mostly focused in greater Seattle:  traffic congestion.  And...