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Update: Outgoing governor Chris Gregoire this morning announced a $3.3 million budget recommendation and signed an executive order to begin funding ocean acidification research and other initiatives outlined in her blue ribbon panel’s report. The money would create an ocean acidification research center at the University of Washington, help shellfish hatcheries forecast when lethal water is headed their way, and allow the state to begin teasing apart how much of...

What’s in a storm’s name(s)? In hopes of avoiding a “Hurricane Cassandra” (yet another wake-up call that we simply ignore as Joe Romm fears) and moving us closer to a Cuyahoga—the name of the river in Ohio that caught fire in 1969 and set the stage for our major national environmental laws, I’m doing my part to pull something productive from the wreckage. Seeking lessons for communicating about extreme weather...

Alan: Among the dozen or so books I devoured this summer, the single best read was the second volume of the classic William Manchester biography of Winston Churchill. This book recounts Churchill’s decade in political exile during the 1930s. England, like the rest of Western Europe, was deep in pacifist denial about the Nazi threat. Churchill, a ruling-party back bencher in parliament, stubbornly, valiantly, and almost single-handedly waged a campaign...

The US is smack in the middle of two major demographic shifts: it’s aging, and at the same time it’s getting more racially and ethnically diverse. We’ve already discussed the effects of aging on driving: as the baby boomers move towards retirement they’ll drive less, and we can expect per capita vehicle travel to fall as a result. But how will diversity trends—particularly the increasing numbers of Latinos in the...

Eric dP: I was pleased to see economist Art Laffer and Republican former congressman Bob Inglis make the conservative case for a carbon tax shift. At The American Prospect, Jason Mark has a first-rate treatment of the coal exports debate. The small town of Brainerd, Minnesota is moving ahead with a super-smart energy strategy, tapping the waste heat from city sewers and re-using it (the heat, not the sewage). Finally, an...

I’ve been thinking about upgrading to an electric car for a while now. And on today’s market, there are plenty of models to choose from. But having a lot of options makes for a complicated decision! Each model of electric car has its own unique mix of efficiency, charging time, and driving range—and since buying a car is a big decision, I want to find the model that makes the...

Eric dP: Joel Connelly deserves many kudos for being the first to draw attention to the fact that Tim Eyman’s proposed latest “two-third majority” anti-tax ballot measure is really just a stalking horse for Big Oil. You can tell, as Connelly points out, because oil refiners have already thrown a staggering $350,000 behind his initiative. I really think it’s worth being clear about this: tax policy in Washington State is...

At this point, most serious researchers agree that the average city-dweller produces fewer climate-warming emissions than a typical suburban or rural resident. City-folks tend to drive less, and walk or use transit more, than those of us who live in suburbs or out in the country. And city dwellers also tend to have less living space per capita, and are more likely to share walls or ceilings with their neighbors—all...

Today the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication released the second report from their latest national survey. Reinforcing several polls that show a recent uptick in American concern about climate change, this study (fielded in March) shows that despite more immediately pressing priorities—namely economic ones—Americans are surprisingly open to climate solutions—across party lines. In fact, Yale/George Mason found that “majorities...

Puget Sound Energy is the biggest electric utility in Washington, supplying power to more than a million homes and businesses. PSE has a well-deserved reputation for supporting clean energy: it is the second-largest generator of wind power among privately-held US utilities, and it runs an award-winning Green Power Program. Less well known is that PSE also has a large ownership stake in a huge coal-fired power plant that is too...