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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...

Over the last two days, a question has circulated around our office, asked by green architect and Sightline friend Rob Harrison.  His quandary:  which car should he buy to replace an automobile that was totalled? He’s narrowed his choices to 4—a super-efficient Toyota Prius, a VW or Subaru station wagon, or a 1992 Honda Accord—and is weighing factors including price, reliability, safety, utility, and environmental performance. I can’t claim any...

One important but little discussed difference between the Canadian and American parts of Cascadia is their different philosophies about trash. This difference has emerged in the last decade. And, sad to say, the Canadians have left the Americans in the dustbin, so to speak. British Columbia has adopted a far less regulatory, government-centered approach, even while they’ve made dramatic gains in waste reduction and recycling. I’m talking here about “product...

As you may have noticed, I’m no knee-jerk promoter of organic farming (I’ll explain why, in a moment), but organic strawberries are worth the extra dollar. The reason is methyl bromide, a potent stratospheric ozone destroyer, which is applied most heavily to strawberry fields. Its use is actually increasing in the US, because of a loophole in the Montreal Protocol, as the New York Timesreported Friday. The problem with organic...

This piece by John Tierney in the New York Times Magazine is wrong in many ways, so it’s probably important to point out what’s right about it. To summarize the article (we read, so you don’t have to!): Cars are great, high-tech roads are cool, people who don’t like new roads are condescending nanny-statists who oppose consumer choice, public transit is too expensive, and the only real solutions to traffic...

Because our economic progress is typically tracked through one-sided measurements such as the GDP, it’s easy to overlook the real economic picture for average Americans (as we have written about here,here, and here). An example: Recently released census information, reported in the Seattle P-I, revealed that the income gap between the richest and poorest Americans has steadily increased over the last two decades, and the paychecks of those at the...

The French government’s proposal to finance a rebate on gas-sipping cars with a tax on gas-guzzling ones (discussed here) hit a roadblock yesterday: the plan was shelved after it ran into opposition from carmakers and conservative lawmakers. That’s terrible news; not only would it have reduced fossil fuel emissions, it also would have set a fantastic precedent for wider use of such “feebates” in the rest of the world, as...

More thoughts on the same item. Fires in the dry, inland Northwest are igniting as usual, near Washington’s Lake Chelan, for example. But such fires are commonplace; in fact, they maintain vigorous ecosystems. Cascadia’s coastal rainforests, especially northern ones, are a different story. They’re not adapted to fire. On our coast, as in tropical rainforests, fire is a sign of something unnatural-most likely, global climate change. North of Cascadia, in...

Provincial electric utility BC Hydro released its 20-year plan a few months ago, and The Tyee has a useful critique. BC’s energy use is somewhat more efficient than the Northwest states’. But there’s plenty of room for progress. The plan calls for modest expansion in wind-power and other clean, renewables. But it also glances yearningly at coal and another mega-dam. The plan is far too cautious about renewables, according to...

Oregon’s counterproductive tax system briefly experienced some serious discussion in the state legislature, according to today’s Oregonian. Gridlocked returned quickly, of course, but there were a few shining moments of light. There’s little sign yet that tax shifting-taxing pollution rather than paychecks-is about to catch on in the Beaver State. The idea remains too novel, and dramatic tax reforms almost always come during large political crises when one party controls...