Search Results

Lots of trends start in California.  Some of them are good—like the state’s clean car standards (now under consideration in Washington State) and its  vehicle global Warming law. But some trends aren’t so good. The latest in the "not so good" category is the national push to let states open up their HOV lanes to hybrid vehicles. California did it a while back, opening up HOV lanes to any hybrid...

The organization of governance in Cascadia is one of those arcane but essential topics that only gets wonks excited and, consequently, rarely gets fixed. Like tax policy and insurance regulation, it’s awesomely important and powerful but very hard to move politically. (My earlier post on boring things that change the world is here.) A few years ago, I served on a panel that advised the Puget Sound Regional Council on...

"Hardened Northwest residents have learned a basic truth: Gray is beautiful." That’s Joel Connelly in today’s column in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Damp and dismal winters are the conditions that make possible our region’s abundant rivers, forests, and farms. Connelly describes two local characteristics of climate change: receding mountain glaciers and tree-killing insect infestations in BC’s forests. And he also points to some encouraging political leadership in the region, even if...

Good leadership in Olympia, in the form of House Bill 1272. The bill would require all new public buildings that get state funding to meet national standards for energy efficiency. The U.S. Green Building Council’s standards, called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), rate commercial construction on a variety of measures (pdf) of sustainability. HB 1272 would mandate that state-funded public buildings meet LEED’s "silver" rating (the second most...

From the Victoria Times Colonist, an editorial arguing that a good way to protect one of Cascadia’s rarest creatures is to stop shooting it. British Columbia’s central coast, a region of dense rainforest, is home to an unusual animal: the Kermode bear (sometimes called the Spirit Bear or Ghost Bear). It’s actually a black bear that carries a recessive gene for white fur, which means that one can occasionally find...

…read this one, from the Vancouver Sun. According to the story, panelists at a forum on the future of the BC forest sector warned that the industry is completely unprepared for the long-term effects of globalization.  With the emergence of a worldwide timber market, BC is now competing against dozens of new rivals, ranging from New Zealand to Malaysia to South America to Europe.  And cutthroat competition among suppliers means...

Eat Here, a new book by Worldwatch Institute’s Brian Halweil, takes a close look at a topic that is close to many northwesterners’ hearts and taste buds: the burgeoning local food movement. The book is a bit too data-packed-not quite accessible enough for a general audience-but it does have some gems in it, including a series of case studies of communities, businesses, and consumers around the world who are working...

Kudos to Washington’s Puget Sound Action Team (PSAT), which today released its State of the Sound 2004 report. The report contains 14 indicators of Puget Sound’s ecological health, including everything from fish populations to habitat loss to toxic contamination. PSAT’s work is encouraging, not because the findings point to flourishing ecosystems (they don’t), but because Cascadians now have good—and accessible—science to evaluate the health of at least one major ecosystem....

Women live longer than men.  But in the Northwest—as in the U.S., Sweden, Great Britain, and probably elsewhere in Europe—the gap between women and men is narrowing.  Take British Columbia:  in 1975, women could expect to live nearly eight years longer than men.  But by 2004, that gap had narrowed to just over 4 years.  Women are still healthier, on average, but not by as much. But, surprisingly, that’s not...

This was the year of small but significant percentages: 1 percent or less. I’m speaking not only of Washington’s governor race, the Montana legislative elections, or the Ohio presidential vote tally. I’m speaking of budding trends toward a durable way of life in Cascadia. The region reached the vicinity of 1 percent on a number of heartening, if incipient, measures during the past twelve months. In British Columbia’s Fraser Basin-the...