Search Results
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How much do we spend on fossil fuels?
If you could choose how much of your money to spend on fossil fuels compared to K-12 public schools, how would you divvy up your dollars? Here’s where your money actually goes: If you live in Oregon, you spend around $1,300 per year on K-12 education and around $2,800 per year on fossil fuels. If you live in Washington, you spend around $1,500 per year on K-12 education and around...Read more » -
5 Tips for Portland and Vancouver BC on Uber
Portland and Vancouver BC officials, welcome to Seattle’s pain. With Uber launching (or threatening to launch) its app-based personal transportation service in your city, you have a real puzzle to solve. You only have to balance all these goals: Protecting consumers, supporting green alternatives to car ownership, enforcing sensible rules, jettisoning outdated ones, not rewarding bad behavior, confronting limitations of a strangled taxi system you created, navigating tough equity questions,...Read more » -
A Carbon Pollution Policy with All the Fixin’s
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...Read more » -
What is Xylene, and What Does it Mean for Puget Sound?
It’s a safe bet that most people have no idea what C6H4(CH3)2 refers to. It’s a chemical compound that is better known—when it is known at all—as xylene, a niche product of oil refining soon to go into development on the shores of Puget Sound. It’s a change that has potential implications for the health of the Salish Sea, for oil trains, and perhaps even for gasoline prices. Because most...Read more » -
Why Price Carbon—Can’t We Just Regulate It?
Most Americans—including most Republicans—want to regulate carbon pollution. Oregon and Washington have already set legally binding limits on the climate-changing gas. Next, climate change warriors in Olympia and Salem are trying to make those limits enforceable. They’re considering hard emissions caps enforced through limited permits and complemented by an array of targeted policies. But what if Oregon and Washington’s lawmakers fail to insert sharp incisors in their beyond-carbon rules? Desperate...Read more » -
All the World’s Carbon Pricing Systems in One Animated Map
Oregon and Washington leaders are contemplating turbocharging their clean energy transition by instituting carbon pricing here in the Pacific Northwest. Will a cap or tax on carbon work? Has anyone else ever done this before? Why, yes. Since you ask: Scandinavian countries have been pricing carbon for more than two decades. The European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) has been pricing carbon for almost a decade. US states and...Read more » -
Indiana Jones and the Clean Power Rule
In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indie finds himself on a ledge before a chasm, with no obvious way across. Ignoring the evidence of his senses, he follows a clue he’s been given, takes a leap of faith and lands on an invisible plank. The proposed US Clean Power Rule puts Oregon and Washington, along with other Western states, on a ledge, too. Oregon and Washington are on a...Read more » -
Jury-Rigging Democracy
“The best argument against democracy,” Winston Churchill reportedly said, “is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Watching native-born Americans belly flop on a citizenship test suggests Churchill wasn’t far wrong. But what about a week-long conversation? Worse? Actually, no. An intriguing model of citizen participation in Oregon suggests that prolonged conversations with voters—or, conversations among voters—can dramatically improve democracy. The model is based on the jury: the panel of...Read more » -
Can We Depend on the Money?
Is carbon revenue too flighty for Washington to depend on it to solve some of its budget woes—including the State Supreme Court’s McCleary mandate to fully fund education? If a carbon price is successful at cutting pollution, won’t the revenue stream dry up as the pollution dwindles? The answer is no. Price and pollution are related; the price must progressively increase to continue curtailing pollution. If Washington keeps ratcheting down...Read more » -
Weekend Reading 9/19/14
Serena Don’t forget to visit your city’s PARK(ing) Day installations TODAY! (I’m dying to stop by Seattle Met‘s SwaPark.) Here are listings for Seattle, but I’m having trouble finding them for Portland, Vancouver, Eugene, Spokane, Olympia, Salem, Burnaby… others? If you have links, share ’em! Better yet, if you visit one today, snap a photo and send it to me! Alan Three think pieces this week: Should we aim to...Read more »