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There is a war going on, and Oregon is ground zero. Some states, mostly in the South and Midwest, are restricting voter rights through Voter ID laws and barriers to voter registration. But the Pacific Northwest is defending rights. In a democracy, honoring every citizen’s vote is the right thing to do. Oregon proves it is also the cost-conscious thing to do. Oregon is a national leader in striking down...

As the Carbon Pollution Accountability Act, now HB 1314, wends its way through committee hearings, new economic analysis and revised revenue estimates are popping up. It’s still the same pollution-cutting, clean-energy-spurring bill you know and love, but the new numbers show it will send even more money to Washington public schools, and it will also grow jobs. Less pollution, more clean energy, better schools, and more jobs. I think that...

Kristin E. Futurist Vivek Wadwha has good news: within two decades we will have almost unlimited energy, food, water, and healthcare. The bad news is: there won’t be any jobs, and there is no “jobs bill” that can fix that. What are we to do? He suggests shorter work weeks, which makes sense. But how do you get shorter work weeks for everyone? Walmart won’t pay a living wage to...

This morning, car2go—the free-floating car-sharing system featuring perky, pay-by-the-minute Smart cars across 60 cities worldwide—announced it would grow its Seattle fleet by a full 50%, increasing from 500 to 750, and that it would expand to cover the entirety of the city limits. The expansion takes advantage of legislation passed by City Council in January to allow up to 3,000 car permits total: up to 750 for each of four companies, and 750 only if...

When you ask people to estimate how many people are killed on American roads each year, the answers vary widely: 1 million? 500,000? 40,000? 2,000? As the video below shows, when you ask them what Washington state’s traffic death goal should be, most people have no idea. They offer tentative guesses, ranging from fewer than 100 to 5000. (For context, there are actually about 33,000 annual US traffic deaths now,...

Congressman Tip O’Neill famously said that “All politics is local.” Climate politics is no different. So it is with great enthusiasm that I link to the Washington State carbon tax swap calculator, a snazzy tool that allows you to evaluate how one particular carbon pricing policy—the revenue-neutral Carbon Washington tax shift—will affect your own individual household. The Carbon Washington proposal uses carbon tax revenues to reduce sales taxes and B&O...

2014 was a big year for Sightline, inside and out. We took deeper dives into family-friendly urban policy, money’s influence on our democracy, and making polluters pay for their carbon pollution. We also continued our leading research on coal and oil exports out of Cascadia; traffic trends, transit funding, and rideshare safeguards; and a number of other key topics for promoting sustainability across the Northwest. And you, dear reader, you dove...

Ted Have you wondered why the cast, promos, and maybe even the audiences for the new hit movie “Wild” (based on the 2012 memoir by Cheryl Strayed) include so few nonwhite faces? African-American writer Brandon Harris did; his essay “Why is Camping a White Thing?” poses a question that lingers like the proverbial pebble in the boot. Could Forest Schools offer affordable early learning in settings intended to connect the...

A purely regulatory approach to cutting carbon is like Thanksgiving dinner without the turkey. But just charging polluters without any other policies is like eating turkey by itself with no cranberry sauce or stuffing to make it delicious, no mashed potatoes, green beans and yams to round out the meal, and no pie to sweeten the experience. In Oregon and Washington, we want the full dinner. Here’s how serving up...

In my last post, I focused on Seattle’s nascent neighborhood greenway system, which aims to create a network of residential streets that elevates the needs of kids, cyclists, parents pushing strollers, elderly shoppers with carts, pet walkers, and other foot-powered travelers. To get a sense of how that works, we only need look to the city that Seattle stole many of its ideas from: Portland. It’s been building some version...