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When I was pregnant with my daughter, I wrote a lot on this blog about the dangerous toxics that we carry in our bodies and that pass through us to our babies in the womb and in our breast milk. So many things gall me about this issue. It seems crazy that we’ve come to a place in history where fish—the best possible source of the long-chain omega-3 fatty acid...

Clark Nationwide, the enforcement of marijuana laws targets minorities: Black Americans were nearly four times as likely as whites to be arrested on charges of marijuana possession in 2010, even though the two groups used the drug at similar rates, according to new federal data. For me, that’s another reason to applaud Washington voters for approving I-502. (Note: that’s just my opinion, not Sightline’s.) Alan One thing I share with...

I have not owned a car in seven years, but I do own a garage. It’s pictured above. In fact, I am legally required to own an off-street parking space; that’s written in the land-use code for my city, Seattle, as for virtually every city. The driveway that leads to my garage, meanwhile, eliminates almost exactly one parking space from my street. Parking in front of a driveway is illegal,...

Today’s Wall Street Journal includes a front-page feature on Vancouver, BC’s secondary suites and laneway houses and a video interview with Conor Dougherty, the author. The piece includes a nice Sightline quote; we were a major source for it. (Unfortunately, the full article is behind a pay wall.) To get a sense of how America will pack more people into its cities, head north to an alley that runs behind...

Cars that drive themselves seemed like science fiction just a few years ago, but recent demonstration projects have shown that the technology is already here. Self-driving car technology, pioneered by Google, has advanced so quickly that its ubiquitous presence on city streets is now simply a matter of time. Boosters say that mass-market autonomous cars are only 3 to 5 years away; others estimate at least 10 years. No one...

This is required reading—and viewing—for anyone worried about how export terminals handle coal in reality: a jaw-dropping exposé on the pollution from Ridley Terminals at Prince Rupert, British Columbia. You absolutely must click through and see the photos collected by The Northern View newspaper in it’s excellent investigation of Ridley. Here are a few of the alarming findings from the paper’s investigation into coal-handling at the facility: “There’s a certain...

Alan Bill McKibben crushed this interview with an Australian TV station. The topic: coal exports. Pam History is often hidden, and I admit to not knowing that John Muir was friends with racial eugenists who advocated control of the reproduction and immigration of people of color. It may have taken a century, but the Sierra Club, founded by Muir in 1892 and with a less-than-stellar history of equity, is now on record supporting policies...

In British Columbia’s provincial elections yesterday, the right-of-center Liberal party pulled off an astonishing upset to hang onto power. It was an election in which the politics of fossil fuel expansion played a meaningful role, particularly for the NDP, the major opposition party. With the Liberals forming another majority government, it makes sense now to reflect on the epic-scale fossil fuel exports planned for BC and the its neighbors in...

Clark Even after years of staring at it, I never realized until this week that the oh-so-familiar recycling symbol is in the shape of a Möbius strip. Wow: Google’s Earth Engine now displays 28 years of satellite images, pretty much anywhere on the planet. Here’s an aerial time-lapse view of coal mining in Wyoming. Here’s the growth of Las Vegas. I won’t depress you with views of Amazon deforestation, but...

According to the latest figures, birth rates in Cascadia (British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho) have fallen to what could very well be an all-time low. And when I say “all time” I mean it: it’s quite possibly the lowest birth rate since humans first came to the Northwest. Of course, there’s no way to know with any certainty what the birth rate was before records were kept—but in times...