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A post today on Gordon Price’s Price Tags is, well, priceless. Gordon took a gander at this summary of British Columbia’s long-range transportation plan—which mostly describes massive road building projects. And he combed through it, looking for a few choice phrases, including “climate change,” “agricultural land,” “cyclist,” and “pedestrian.” Needless to say, he didn’t find much. Which makes Gordon wonder: [H]ow can an organization charged with strategic thinking have no...

Okay, this is becoming an unhealthy obsession. I promise to stop soon. But before I do… Ever wondered how Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions stack up to other countries? To the US? If so, then feast your eyes on these, my friend. (See here and here for better versions.) The maps below show Canadian provinces labelled with countries or states that have equivalent greenhouse gas emissions from energy use. Full versions—available...

In the Seattle Times, Danny Westneat hits the nail on the head, making much the same point that Clark made a few days ago about the traffic apocalypse-that-wasn’t. Westneat also adds this: In 1998, British researchers studied what happened to traffic in more than 100 highway and bridge shutdowns in Europe and the U.S. They found that on average 25 percent of all car trips simply evaporated. People still went...

Virtually every dollar spent on oil and gas by residents of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho gets siphoned out of the region’s economy. We produce little natural gas and absolutely no petroleum. So spending our money on fossil fuels means that there’s less for local residents and businesses. How much money do we spend? LOTS. $53 million a day. Click below to see the numbers rack up in real time on...

You don’t have to go farther than Hollywood to see one reason Bicycle Neglect is so rampant in North America. Consider the 2005 film The 40-Year-Old Virgin. The middle-aged protagonist, obsessed with video games and action figures, seems stuck in early adolescence. The film spends two hours lampooning him for being emasculated, immature, not a real man. His vehicle? A bike. (You can almost hear the schoolyard snickers.) To be...

Everyone knows that cars are expensive, right? Still, it may come as a surprise to find out just how much money we spend getting from place to place. The cost of the car itself—typically the second biggest purchase many families make in their lives—is just the start. When you start adding in the cost of gasoline, and car insurance, and maintenance and repairs, and parking, and taxes to build new...

Your car’s greenhouse gas emissions are about 25 percent worse than you think. How so? Well, for each gallon of gas you burn in your engine, there’s the climate equivalent of another quarter-gallon or so embedded in your consumption. What that means is this: the gasoline you use didn’t just magically appear in your tank—it was extracted, refined, and transported to your local station. And all that activity released emissions. It’s a curiosity of our energy...

Two decades of so-called progress: the Dow soared but BC’s middle-class incomes barely budged.

During my daughters’ school year—back when my two-stop commute was particularly gnarly—I noticed what must be a familiar pattern to long-time Seattle-area I-5 commuters: traffic on Monday and Friday mornings tended to be way better than it was from Tuesday through Thursday. In my experience, it was pretty common for the entire highway to be clogged for miles—even the carpool lanes—on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. But on a good Monday...

The David Suzuki Foundation just released a new report on the state of British Columbia’s wildlife. The title pretty much says it all: “Rich Wildlife, Poor Protection.” To take just one example of the problem straight from the press release: B.C. has lost 49 known species and subspecies since pre-settlement (including the Dawson caribou, greater sage-grouse and western pond turtle). The problem is particularly acute in the province because—and this...