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Hold on to your cycling shorts and prepare yourself to fight traffic in the bike lane—well that might be an exaggeration. Today, thousands will forego cars and even buses to take advantage of the most efficient vehicle on the planet: the bicycle. So grab your helmet and reflector pads and get some fresh air—and sunshine, it’s Seattle’s Bike to Work Day!   To celebrate this human-powered day, we thought it...

Today’s Vancouver Sun gives some ink to a cluster of issues that I’ve been pondering of late: how BC’s carbon tax shift fits with Cap and Trade. I’m famously infatuated with carbon tax shifting. I’m also a zealot for auctioned Cap and Trade. The good news is that with careful policy design, Cap and Tax can be better than either Cap or Tax. The Tax toughens the Cap, the way...

Today, John McCain traveled to Portland, Oregon and speechified on his new climate policy. His plan is far from perfect—more on that later—but it’s a remarkable departure from a certain president who shall remain nameless: Instead of idly debating the precise extent of global warming, or the precise timeline of global warming, we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters, and all the endless troubles...

(4/25/2008: Updated by correcting two errors) One of Washington State’s conservative think tanks has just proposed a carbon tax shift. Interesting. (Read it here.) The Washington Policy Center has garbed its tax shift proposal in anti-government clothing. Some of the rhetoric makes my skin crawl. But the proposal itself is sensible if modest. It includes a starter carbon tax that pays for a small sales tax reduction. As a bonus,...

There’s lots of buzz about green-collarjobs these days (sort of like blue-collar jobs, but with a sustainable edge)—whether you’re listening to Obama, McCain, or Clinton; Gregoire, Kulongoski, or Schwarzenegger. You hear this kind of thing a lot: A study conducted by the RAND Corporation and the University of Tennessee found that producing 25 percent of all American energy fuel and electricity from renewables by the year 2025 would produce the...

Always the critic. This 2-paragraph Globe and Mail squib has a shockingly high error-to-fact ratio. B.C. life expectancy rises to more than 80 B.C. residents are living longer than ever before, and now have one of the highest life expectancies in the world, according to new statistics. The province’s vital statistics annual report shows that people born in 2006 can expect to live an average of 80.9 years, compared with...

    In the face of high gas prices, what steps have you taken to conserve? Are you planning your daily trips so you can go one more day without having to make another trip to your local fill station? Are you driving less and walking and bussing more? Have you tossed out the SUV for a Honda? If so, you’re not alone. Braking News, a report released today by...

Awesome. I’ve always wanted something like this: a city by city map of affordable housing, indexed to local wages. But wait, there’s more! This map combines both housing and transportation costs. The result is maybe a bit surprising. In-city areas tend to look pretty good, while far-flung suburbs—where you get a lot of square footage (and lawnage) for your money—don’t look so good at all. It makes a little clearer the...

Uh-oh, even the wild-eyed hippies at the International Monetary Fund are now admitting that reducing carbon emissions will cost the economy dearly. I made this chart to illustrate: The red line is business as usual: we continue using the earth’s atmosphere as a free dumping ground for our pollution. The green line is what happens if we reduce our emissions 60% below 2002 levels. (Both lines are indexed to 2007...

Ruh roh.  Looks like the Northwest states—particularly Washington—are seeing a substantial boost in the number of people signed up for food stamps.  In fact, comparing 2006 figures with year-end data for 2007, Washington’s jump in food stamp utilization was the largest in the country: an increase of more than 25 percent in a single year!! Typically, rising food stamp enrollment is a clear sign of a slowing economy.  But Washington’s...