Search Results
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Shell’s Rig is Headed to Portland
Royal Dutch Shell, the world’s second largest company, wants to find oil under the seabed off the coast of Alaska. After a disastrous attempt at Arctic drilling in 2012, the company has returned this summer to once again try to drill exploratory wells. But just like before, they’ve hit a major snag. Shell’s MSV Fennica icebreaker vessel isn’t pointed north. Instead it’s headed to Portland’s shipyard for repairs to a...Read more » -
HALA and the $100,000 Question
In the last ten months, Zillow says my house in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood has appreciated by more than $100,000. Seattle has about 150,000 houses like mine. The owners of every one of them have been getting richer daily from the city’s housing affordability crisis. One person’s affordability “state of emergency,” in other words, is another person’s cha-ching. That’s the harsh economic and political reality that made the Seattle Housing Affordability...Read more » -
Tacoma’s Ticking Time Bomb
80 km south of Timmins, Ontario, Oil Train Derailment by Transportation Safety Board of Canada (license) (Used with permission.)
With no fanfare whatsoever, Tacoma has claimed a new, though dubious, distinction: it is now the Northwest city most threatened by oil trains. As new research by Sightline reveals, a combined 80,000 barrels per day of crude oil—about 8 loaded trains per week—are permitted to travel on a publicly owned railway into the heart of Tacoma’s industrial area. In addition, another 15 loaded trains bound for north Puget Sound refineries...Read more » -
Weekend Reading 6/19/15
Clark I found this story both sad and familiar: Australian aboriginal communities are opposing a massive coal mine development that they consider a threat to their way of life, so they sent representatives trekking all the way to New York to discourage international financiers from backing the project. To me, it sounds eerily similar to what’s going on in our part of the world, where Native American tribes are facing...Read more » -
Hate Gridlocked Legislatures?
It’s tempting to blame politicians. If only Obama were warmer, he might be able to win over Republicans. If only Doug Ericksen weren’t captured by fossil fuel money, he would find a way for Washington state to take action on climate change. But gridlock is now the norm in Washington, DC, and it may be spreading to state legislatures. The problem is not that we keep electing representatives who stink...Read more » -
Everything Oregon Legislators Need To Know About Stopping Climate Pollution
A Washington state solar installer, with a panel. by Washington Environmental Council (Used with permission.)
Quick! You have seven minutes to tell Oregon legislators everything they need to know about stopping climate pollution. . . GO! That was my task last week when testifying at an Oregon Senate informational hearing about two bills that would stop the free lunch for climate polluters in Oregon—see the video of my testimony below. Senate Bill 965 is a cap-and-dividend bill that would give all the revenue back to...Read more » -
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Hate Negative Campaigns?
It’s tempting to think of politics in terms of personality problems: if only Obama were warmer, he might be able to break through Congressional gridlock. If only Dino Rossi weren’t such a hard-nose, he wouldn’t inspire such negative campaigns. But with wave after wave of negative campaigns, it seems the problem is not really politicians’ personalities. Maybe all politicians are not bad apples. Maybe our voting system is a bad...Read more » -
Ridley’s Coal Exports: A Terminal Illness?
The Ridley coal export terminal in Northern BC, which has been suffering through a dismal year of collapsing exports in the face of weak international prices, recently published its 2014 annual report on its website. And it’s a doozy. Annual reports usually are written with a hint of sunny can-do optimism. They trumpet every shred of good news, present even the direst challenges as golden opportunities, and paint a vision...Read more »