fbpx
Donate Newsletters

Region: British Columbia

Sustainability on Shaky Ground

by

Editor’s note: This blog post was contributed by guest blogger Edward Wolf, a Portland writer and contributing author to Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the Twenty-First Century.

Seismograph-flickr-tonyjcaseI have always been eager to understand the natural and human capital of the Pacific Northwest, the attributes of people and place that shape the possibilities of our home. I tend to frame sustainability in these bioregional terms.

But I’ve noticed that even the most dedicated bioregionalists treat geology, if they consider it at all, more as a passive template than an active force. I think it’s time to broaden that notion. We may be approaching one of those infrequent moments when geology meets history.

The Cascadia Subduction Zone is a plate-boundary fault that stretches from Cape Mendocino to Vancouver Island. It spawns earthquakes and tsunamis as powerful as any on earth. Barely known 25 years ago, Cascadia is now the most thoroughly studied subduction zone on earth.

New evidence suggests that Cascadia ruptures far more often than was believed even a few years ago. Cascadia has generated more than 40 earthquakes of Magnitude 8 or greater (i.e., comparable to the Chilean earthquake of February 2010) in the last 10,000 years. The most recent rupture of the fault has been dated precisely to January 26, 1700—311 years ago. About 80 percent of the intervals between those 40 documented earthquakes appear to be shorter than 300 years.

Geophysicists assess probabilities in a variety of ways, but their conclusions boil down to “we are living on borrowed time.” The best-informed people I know expect the next Cascadia quake and tsunami in our lifetimes, certainly in our children’s lifetimes. No aspect of our infrastructure has been built to withstand the shaking or the waves we will experience. Strange to say and harder to accept, in our vulnerability we may resemble Haiti more than we resemble Chile or New Zealand.

Read more

Canadians Believe in Climate Change!…and Government!?

by

A report detailing Canadian and US public opinion on climate change and based on the results of two national surveys was released Wednesday by the Public Policy Forum and Sustainable Prosperity (full report here, pdf).

The big takeaways:

  • Far more Canadians than Americans believe climate change is real (80 percent vs. 58 percent).
  • Canadians, unlike their US counterparts, see clear government responsibility in addressing climate change (65 percent vs. 43 percent).
  • And unlike the bulk of Americans, Canadians are willing to pay for global warming solutions (twice as many Canadians as Americans support both a cap-and-trade system for industry and the idea of paying a carbon tax of up to $50 a month).

Support for Climate Policies in the US and Canada—and Willingness to Pay


Note: Support levels represent the percentage of respondents who indicated that they either “strongly supported” or “somewhat supported” the policy option.

Read more

Time for BC to Index the Minimum Wage?

by

According to this piece in the Vancouver Sun, British Columbia’s aspiring political leaders are mostly lining up in favor of an increase in the provincial minimum wage.  Which is perfectly reasonable: BC’s minimum wage hasn’t budged for almost a decade, and now stands far lower than that of any other Canadian province. (This fact sheet from … Read more

BPA Ban Debated in Oregon

by

Sippy cup_SliceOfChic_FlickrOregon is looking to ban BPA from baby bottles, sippy cups, baby formula cans, and reusable sports water bottles. Washington did a similar ban last year—minus a ban on formula cans. And Oregon is proposing an interesting add-on to its proposed rules: requiring manufacturers to label cans as containing BPA.

Then shoppers get to decide if they want a can of peaches lined with a known endocrine disruptor for their toddler’s lunch, or if they will opt instead for a non-BPA can, or maybe frozen or fresh peaches.

The Oregon Environmental Council is drumming up support for the legislation—numbered HB 3258—on this BPA-Free Oregon Facebook page.

Transparency in ingredients and packaging is a great tool for moving us toward safer consumer goods, and one that manufacturers are hard pressed to argue against. If they stand behind the safety of their products and the chemicals they’re using, they’ve got nothing to hide. If BPA and my other favorite family of hormone disruptors, phthalates, are so fantastic and necessary, the chemical industry and manufacturers should tell me they’re in their products—and specifically which chemicals—heads held high.

Read more

Stormwater Stomachache

by

Pepto_Miche11e_FlickrStormwater obviously causes problems for the environment and infrastructure, washing away salmon eggs in torrents of runoff and flooding basements. But does it threaten human health as well? You bet it does, and in ways that might surprise you.

Polluted runoff flushes raw sewage across beaches, triggers blooms of toxic algae in our drinking water systems, and contaminates shellfish and seafood we eat with bacteria and dangerous chemicals.

Over the past three years, sewage-tainted runoff has forced the closure of 32 Washington beaches, some for a couple of days, others for weeks. The problem is caused when rainwater mixes with the sewer system—sometimes by design and sometimes thanks to old sewer pipes that let the rain seep in. The cocktail of polluted runoff and raw sewage overwhelms the sewage treatment plant, forcing the combined sewer overflow (or CSO) to dump the waste into a nearby river, lake, or bay.

And what’s in that lovely concoction? Researchers find everything from salmonella bacteria to the parasite giardia, to Norwalk-like viruses. Ailments resulting from exposure to sewage-tinged water include:

diarrhea, vomiting, stomach cramps, fever, hepatitis, bronchitis, pneumonia, and swimmers itch.

People get sick by swallowing the water either when recreating in or when their drinking water becomes contaminated. You can get sick simply by inhaling small droplets, or through contact with skin, eyes, ears, and cuts. Children, pregnant women, the elderly, and any immuno-compromised people are most at risk. (This 2004 EPA report to the Congress gives a great overview of CSO health impacts.)

Grossed out yet? Let’s delve deeper.

Read more

Northwest Regional Climate Progress

by

This morning, British Columbia’s Climate Minister John Yap and Washington’s Director of Ecology Ted Sturdevant signed a pair agreements on joint climate action. (Early media coverage here and here.) One agreement commits to mutually supporting efforts to move toward carbon neutral state/provincial governmental operations. The second agreement sets out a plan for working together to … Read more

Sustainable Versus Affordable

by

Redmond 2.JPGFor the last several years something has really gotten under my skin: the way we talk about housing and affordability. I don’t like the way we measure it.

The first time I found myself getting unhappy about the discussion about housing affordability was a few years ago when I watched the debate over legislation to create incentive zoning in Seattle. By using a formula based on Area Median Income and the normative “rule of thumb” for housing costs, the Council decided that a hypothetical worker in Seattle making $45,000 should pay about $1,000 a month for rent. Developers who wanted to build extra housing should have to build more housing at that price.

That just didn’t seem to make sense to me at the time and it still doesn’t. My question is: can’t we find a better way to define affordability? I’m not the only one asking this question. The Center for Neighborhood Technology has developed a new measure and the Urban Land Institute’s Terwilliger Center is trying to do the same thing. There must be better ways to talk about what affordability means in an urban context.

Read more

+ More