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Where Do Canadians Stand on Climate?
Editor’s Note October 3, 2016: Did you hear the news? Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced today that every Canadian province will have until 2018 to adopt a carbon pricing plan. To celebrate this key step forward in climate action, we are reviving this piece from earlier this year on Canadian perceptions of climate change. Now let’s hope that the United States can learn from Canada’s climate success and move forward on climate policy. Prime Minister Justin...Read more » -
Weekend Reading 3/4/16
Kristin Nick Hanauer gives us a 21st century view of the economy: a healthy economy is one that is creating new solutions to human problems. To solve problems, we need a diversity of ideas and approaches. To foster more ideas, we need to give more people the opportunity to participate. Bill Gates had a good idea, but giving him tax breaks will not suddenly get him to have more ideas....Read more » -
Fracked Fuel and Petrochemical Proposals in the Northwest
The Pacific Northwest states of Oregon and Washington are facing a raft of proposals to build large-scale fossil fuel energy facilities. Situated between vast carbon fuel deposits in the North American interior and fast-growing energy markets in Asia, the Northwest has become a major area of focus for the world’s coal, oil, and gas industries. Although coal export and oil-by-rail have grown intensely controversial, analysts and the media have for the...Read more » -
New Report: Fracked Fuel and Petrochemical Proposals in the Northwest
Sightline is publishing a new report today: Fracked Fuel and Petrochemical Proposals in the Northwest. It provides the first regionwide inventory of a new class of projects under consideration. Although these proposals encompass an array of fuels and technologies, they share core features: they are possible in large part because of new oil and gas extraction techniques, especially fracking, and they either burn carbon-based fossil fuels or use them for...Read more » -
Why Oregon Needs the Healthy Climate Act
Author’s note: Originally, the pie charts in this article included industrial electricity and natural gas use under the industrial sector. I have since updated the emissions and estimated allowance value pie charts to instead categorize emissions (and resulting allowance value) from industrial use of electricity and natural gas under the electricity and natural gas sectors. In the short 2016 legislative session, Oregon lawmakers have a chance to pass the Healthy Climate Act,...Read more » -
Poll: African-Americans Ahead on Climate Change
It’s the same old song and dance. Whenever and wherever a climate policy solution is proposed, the fossil fuel industry and its allies and front groups target people of color and low-income families with scary messages about energy costs. They have been singing the same tune to rural communities and working class families in Washington and Oregon. It’s constant background music for vulnerable communities in California as oil companies attempt to...Read more » -
Washington Can Make Polluters Pay without Boosting Highway Construction
After last week’s article, readers may be worried that Washington’s Constitution, like Oregon’s, protects all revenue from taxes and fees on gasoline for the State Highway Fund. Washington’s State Constitution, like Oregon’s, does dedicate revenue from taxes and fees on motor vehicle fuels to highways, roads, and bridges. But unlike Oregon’s, Washington’s constitutional provision is narrow. Wisely, the Evergreen State constitution’s 18th Amendment requires revenue from fees “intended to be used...Read more » -
What Paris Means for Cascadia
One-hundred-ninety-five nations reached an agreement in Paris this month. Interestingly, the landmark international accord draws a big fat highlight (and maybe a circle and some stars in the margin) across the work that activists and leaders are doing in the Pacific Northwest: not just the work to keep fossil fuels in the ground and make polluters pay for their pollution, but also our work to reduce the influence of money...Read more » -
Weekend Reading 12/18/15
Tarika In Portland on Saturday, a tanker truck of gasoline crashed into a parked train. In photos, such as the one below, the resulting fire can be seen blazing a few hundred feet from a liquid natural gas storage tank. The images are a strong statement on the safeguards we should consider as we experience growth of the oil and gas industry in Cascadia. The nearly 50-year old storage tank,...Read more » -
What the Northwest Needs to Know about the Crude Oil Export Ban Lift
In the wake of a historic agreement at this month’s Paris Climate Change Conference, the United States is expected to take the significantly regressive step of lifting a 40-year ban on crude oil exports, and the Northwest will find itself directly in the path of the oil industry’s plans to dramatically increase crude oil production for overseas export. Since 1975, the Energy Policy and Conservation Act has banned the export...Read more »