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First, London started charging cars a fee to enter the city center—a move widely credited with easing congestion and making it easier to get around in the crowded downtown. Now, the British government is considering instituting congestion pricing for the entire nation. Says this BBC article: The London scheme brought in two years ago is reckoned a success in reducing traffic congestion, despite the fears voiced in advance. The daily...

For years now, scientists have known that US and Canadian residents have elevated levels of PBDEs—a flame retardant known to impair development in lab animals—in their bodies, compared with European and Asian counterparts. (See, for example, our own study of PBDEs in northwesterners.) The problem is that nobody’s been sure of how the compounds get into us. Some speculated that food was the main exposure route—and pointed to studies that...

Researchers have confirmed three new orca calves, in a promising sign for the southern resident orcas, the killer whales that haunt the seas of Washington and British Columbia. At least one of the calves is a newborn—no more than a few days old. That makes five new orcas in 2005, and seven since last October, one of the biggest population increases since the whales have been closely monitored. The Kitsap...

The Pacific Northwest is no stranger to the ill-effects of nuclear production and waste storage. And according to this article in today’s New York Times, the region is about to see even more of it. Idaho National Laboratory, near Idaho Falls, is slated to manufacture 330 pounds of plutonium-238, at an estimated cost of $1.5 billion and 55,000 drums of hazardous waste. To my mind, the truly worrisome aspect of...

If you think we haven’t made progress, consider what happened in south Puget Sound in 1976. One day in March, collectors from Sea World were using powerboats, planes, and explosives to trap orcas in a small inlet where they could be netted. (Although capturing wild killer whales was still legal at that time, the aquarium was violating the terms of their permit.) Luckily for the whales, the scene was witnessed...

When shopping for food, how important is it to buy local?  This question isn’t rhetorical:  I no longer know quite what to think about this.  Obviously, transporting food long distances requires fossil fuels and creates air pollution, among other ills. So all else being equal, it’s better to buy local.  But how much better, I’m just not sure.  Studies such as this one (reported on here by the BBC, blogged...

In the midst of the recentclimatepledginglovefest, it’s easy to lose sight of the unhappy truth that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have already reached levels that effectively guarantee us at least several decades of global warming. While the Kyoto Protocol is worthwhile—to reduce global emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels—it is only a small first step toward putting brakes on climate change. To do that, scientists estimate that worldwide...

Apropos of nothing:  blogger Kevin Drum at The Washington Monthly has a well-written, informative, and balanced setofposts of the so-called "Peak Oil" theory—the idea that, while the world may not be running out of oil, exactly, we may be fairly close to the practical limit of how much oil can be squeezed out of the ground in any given year.  After the peak, goes the theory, oil production gradually declines,...

A look at the fast food industry–an important contributor to the emerging obesity epidemic—courtesy of MSNBC and Newsweek. The skinny (or not so skinny, as the case may be) is that fast food chains like Burger King are getting back to fundamentals: greasy, fat-laden food. Forget about low-fat sandwiches; BK’s new strategy revolves around items like the Enormous Omellete Sandwich that tips the scales at 760 calories. As it turns...

I’m trying my best to give a charitable reading of Knute Berger’s Mossback column in the Seattle Weekly railing against urban density. But it’s hard. To summarize as best I can:  Berger doesn’t like Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels’ plan to promote high-rise housing near Seattle’s downtown because, well…I guess Knute liked the Seattle skyline just as it was in 1980, thank you very much. Now, Berger makes at least one...