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Alan Remember parking reform? Yeah, it’s still just about the most important—and least attended—issue of urban sustainability and affordability. And remember when I alienated untold readers by arguing that urban greens’ biggest blind spot is their opposition to taller buildings? Yeah, it still is, as Sightline friend Erica Barnett illustrates in a distressingly true description of a mob of neighborhood density opponents commenting at a Seattle city council meeting on...

Kristin As if we needed more evidence that poverty is really, really bad: it impairs your mind. Great. Now you can’t pay your bills or put food on the table and you are dumber, to boot. Hey, I have a good idea: let’s give everyone in the richest country on earth a basic income, which will save money on all the band-aids we currently use to plaster over the simple...

Since the last time I wrote about the folks on TV who report the weather, a lot has changed. Five years ago, just over half of weathercasters (54 percent) said global warming is happening (a whopping 25 percent said it isn’t, and, perhaps more surprisingly, 21 percent said they didn’t know). Today, 9 in 10 TV weathercasters say climate change is happening. That’s based on the latest survey of TV...

At 7:15 this morning, yet another crude oil train erupted into an inferno, this time near a small town in central North Dakota. As these wildly dangerous trains continue to explode—at least 10 in the last two years—it’s become challenging to keep track of them all. So, for the record, we’ve assembled here a pictorial timeline of North America’s bomb trains. Last week, the Obama administration adopted new regulations that...

Yesterday at the annual Climate Solutions breakfast, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray demonstrated what the Northwest means for big fossil fuel expansion plans. Expense. Delay. And ultimately, failure. In February the Port of Seattle surprised everyone by rushing through a secretive lease arrangement to host Shell Oil’s Arctic drilling fleet for maintenance in preparation for a summer of drilling the Chukchi Sea bed off Alaska’s North Slope. The move earned bracing...

Robson Street, a major arterial in downtown Vancouver, BC, can be two very different places. On a Saturday in late summer, I found an entire block of Robson closed to cars and filled with people, some lounging on wooden benches under big yellow umbrellas. Amazing smells wafted from nearby food trucks, and a crowd gathered to watch an artist create a replica of the Mona Lisa on the pavement. The following...

Nick A new map from Pembina Institute highlights over 14,000 jobs from clean energy in B.C.​ and allows users to explore 156 renewable energy projects currently in operation or under construction. This first phase of the map specifically examines jobs from clean energy supply; the next phases will examine the bigger clean energy picture, including jobs in energy efficiency, green buildings, and clean transportation. Serena “There was a wreck on the highway—and the wreck is...

Clark Joe Cortright asks exactly the right question: why can’t The Atlantic and Bloomberg do long division? The same goes for the Boston Globe and a host of other outlets that I won’t bother to link to. They all repeated a claim made by J.D. Power, a marketing firm, that “Gen Y” is buying more cars than “Gen X”—writing stories suggesting that the allegedly car-averse Millennials are actually surpassing the...

It’s been a fast and furious few months on the Northwest coal export front—and almost all of the news has been bad for the coal industry’s hopes to ship coal from the Northwest to Asia: International coal prices remain near multi-year lows. After a slight uptick earlier in the year, benchmark thermal coal prices have fallen back to where they were in the depths of the global recession. Adjusted for inflation, they’re the...

Washington House Democrats recently threw a ball by failing to include badly needed carbon revenue in their proposed budget. There may still be time to get carbon revenue back on the table, but a relief pitcher is warming up, just in case. In March, CarbonWA, a grassroots group, filed ballot language with the Secretary of State, and now supporters are out gathering signatures and raising money to put it on...