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In my last post about Vancouver BC, I outlined the family-friendly policies that have helped make its downtown a magnet for families with children. But how do those policies play out in real life? What works well for families and what drives urban parents crazy? The University of British Columbia’s planning department has actually devoted a lot of studentpower to answering those questions. They’ve collected extensive feedback from residents and...

Pretend you’re the governor of Oregon or Washington, or the head of a key committee in the state legislature in Salem or Olympia. Let’s say you’re convinced: Climate change is real, it’s a huge risk, and we need a fast, smooth transition beyond carbon fuels. Putting a price on carbon is the single best way to nudge the whole economy in that direction. What do you do? Designing an entire...

Editor’s Note 8/3/2015: Welcome to another summer of record-breaking heat in the Northwest. From rain forests to wheat farms, thousands of acres have been burned. The Lake Chelan wildfire in Washington quadrupled in size; there have been 1,390 wildfires in BC this season; and more than 800 people are working to contain the Southern Oregon wildfires. Here’s a popular Flashcard from last summer with a few quick and easy ways to talk...

American small business owners. When it comes to politics, they’re portrayed as mythic heroes of the American economy, the salt-of-the-earth “mom and pops,” the real job creators, a constituency to be catered to, a force to be reckoned with. Like apple pie. And conventional wisdom would have it that this powerful, Republican-leaning, slice of the electorate would fall in with the far-right when it comes to climate attitudes. But a...

More than 80 percent of teen pregnancies are accidents. A girl with other hopes and dreams—or maybe a girl who is floundering, who hasn’t even begun to explore her hopes and dreams—finds herself unexpectedly slated for either an abortion or 4,000 diapers. Given the shame and stigma surrounding abortion in many American subcultures, that can seem like a choice between the proverbial rock and hard place. The exciting news that...

Research by Jane Harvey Last time, I described Buckley v Valeo, the seminal Supreme Court ruling that teed up Citizens United and that forbids caps on political spending in the United States. In that case, Chief Justice Warren Burger dissented, writing, “What remains after today’s holding leaves no more than a shadow of what Congress contemplated. I question whether the residue leaves a workable program.” This article documents the residue—the...

Andrea Miller’s third-grader has never been to school on May Day. She stays home each year, rather than risk the chance that her school bus will become hopelessly mired in the occasionally violent protests that engulf downtown Seattle streets. Theoretically, it’s only an 8-minute drive between the Millers’ downtown Seattle apartment and John Hay Elementary, the public elementary school near the top of Queen Anne Hill to which (until recently)...

This is the kind of oil industry-friendly approach to regulation that should make you want to bang your head on your desk. Bloomberg has the story: The oil industry and the railroads that haul its crude have offered U.S. regulators a joint plan to phase out a type of older tank car tied to a spate of fiery accidents… The parties agreed to scrap a fleet of thousands of DOT-111s...

Jerrell The hashtag #GazaUnderAttack has been put to use thousands of times this week for distributing photos of the quickly escalating conflict between Israel and Palestine. Meanwhile, from their cushy London seats, editors at The Economist are taking a broader, historical look at the root cause of conflicts in the Arab world, journeying back a thousand years to when Arabia culturally and economically outpaced Europe. Pondering the expansive question of what has gone...

Not so long ago, the Ridley coal terminal in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, was riding high. The facility, which mostly exports coal from mines in BC and Alberta to customers in Asia, was seeing steady growth in shipping volumes. With international demand looking strong, coal companies had started to clamor for more port space—and the Canadian government, Ridley’s sole owner, announced plans both to expand the terminal and to sell it to a private owner, no doubt hoping for...