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Since it came out about a year ago, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s climate change documentary, seems to have pushed the issue into mainstream consciousness. Millions saw the movie itself—but they were largely true believers anyway. But perhaps more importantly, Gore’s Academy Award has earned him a wider audience among the potentially undecided: 39.9 million TV viewers tuned in for the academy awards themselves, plus 49 million weekly viewers who...

Today’s top news story in Tidepool reflects a trend ongoing in the major metropolitan areas of our region. More people are moving to King County, including the city of Seattle, primarily because of the job market. Also, the Seattle P-I reports (several paragraphs into the article) that “In the case of downtown Seattle, some people are deciding really for the first time that urban, high-rise living can be more attractive...

    The old thinking, as author and thinker Bill McKibben explains in today’s LA Times, goes like this: bigger is always better, growth is good no matter what, and a booming stock market is the ultimate measure of our success. McKibben illustrates the kind of lopsided priorities that naturally flow when we’re ruled by the bottom line, pointing to a scarcely-reported White House report that said the US would...

Today’s top story has been in the news for a while now. But an interesting mix of stories make for a thought-provoking package. Sunday’s Washington Post included an article on the region’s climate-action heroes, California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger and B.C.’s Gordon Campbell, both of whom are right-of-center politicians. Campbell’s story is especially interesting. Conservationists battled him endlessly during his first term as premier on a number of environmental policies. According to...

Today’s top news story on Tidepool.org is an important one for population and health trends in our region. The Vancouver Sun reports that rural women in BC face massive obstacles to reproductive care. Why? Many have to fly to Vancouver for procedures. What’s more, the province offers universal health coverage, which increases women’s access to medical services. With that in mind, consider the barriers a rural woman must face in...

The most valuable feature of a car is often its trunk. It’s easier to move yourself through a typical day in a compact community than it is to move your stuff. For local outings, my car-less family has found that a workable substitute for the trunk is our bike trailer/stroller. Our ten-year-old Oregon-made Burley is so incredibly useful that it deserves a pictorial ode. It’s one of a raft of...

Our minds have a limited capacity to comprehend really, really big numbers. At least mine does. A million tons of C02 might as well be a zillion. Twelve and a half million dollars spent every hour on the Iraq war might as well be bazillions. Sometimes we try to fathom the enormities of raw numbers by visualizing them. How often have you heard that something stacked on end would extend...

A couple of hours ago, US stock investors finished taking a bath—the worst since 9/11—precipitated by a collapse in the Shanghai market. And front and center on its home page, the New York Times already has up a minute-by-minute chart showing today’s progress for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. (Hint: it’s mostly down.) Fair enough, I suppose. Measurement is important. And if the stock market ever deserves media attention, today...

I’m a bit late on this (that’s my new thing), but things just keep getting bigger and better when it comes to climate policy. Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington are joining forces to reduce emissions. Kudos to all five governors who pledged that: …within six months they will set a regional target for lower emissions. A year after that, they pledged, they will devise a regional cap-and-trade system,...

Wow. Just wow. The B.C. government is trying to out-green California with a sweeping strategy unveiled Tuesday to fight global warming by cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions from everything from cars and industry to the daily energy consumption of ordinary people. As far as I can tell, Campbell’s government looked at each of the recent advances in California’s climate policy—the emission goals, the broad authority to develop a cap...