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The disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec—where 47 people were killed by a Bakken oil train derailment—is commonly understood to have resulted from a train slipping its brakes and then rolling downhill into town where it crashed disastrously. It was a tragedy, but it should not be considered just a mechanical accident. In truth, it was a self-reinforcing chain of events and conditions caused by underinvestment, lack of maintenance, and staff cutbacks....

Alan My favorite wrap-up of this week’s UN Climate Summit. We put this in the Daily—about how Cascadia could become a climate refuge, attracting immigrants from harder hit locales—but have you considered this? The region’s cities all have comprehensive plans that assume certain amounts of population growth then indicate where they expect those people to live. The projections may all be way too low, and unless cities plan to accommodate...

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...

Serena To the girl who can never recall even her close friends’ respective birthdays (sorry, guys!), this is absolutely unfathomable: remembering, as an extreme sport. The 9/11 Memorial Museum opened last week: here’s one unflinching reflection on the institution, from a man especially close to the event’s tragedy. A Boston doctor treats lots of poor teenagers, many struggling with weight and nutrition problems. His prescription? Bicycles. And he even gets...

While Cascadian climate hawks have been fighting rearguard actions against proposed pipelines and coal trains, California has been rolling out an ambitious carbon cap. Such a cap is the principal alternative to a carbon tax—such as British Columbia’s carbon tax shift—as a method for putting a price on carbon in Oregon and Washington. It’s an option Oregon will consider next year in its impending revenue-reform debate. In Washington, the Golden...

It’s spring on Wall Street, the time when publicly traded companies announce their first quarter results. Just a few years back, coal companies loved the ritual: a bubble in international coal prices had industry execs crowing, their spirits bouyed by the bright prospects for coal exports. But the coal industry reports today are much bleaker. International coal prices are in the dumps, profits are thin, companies are scaling back…and all...

The Seattle City Council unanimously voted Monday to limit the number of drivers that Lyft, UberX, Sidecar and other similar companies can have on the road to 150 at a time, but it left the door open for the council to revisit or lift that cap after one year. In a compromise that no one loved, council members said the plan allows the popular smartphone-based upstarts to operate legally in...

With the recent blow-up in North Dakota, it seems everyone is (finally) paying attention to the risks of oil train explosions. I’m planning more analysis of the issue later, but for now here’s a roundup of some of the better pieces to read on the subject. Hands down, the best reporting on the risk of oil-by-rail is coming from Canada’s flagship newspaper, the Globe and Mail. Grant Robertson’s first-hand investigation...

Last Friday’s excellent Vancouver Sun story put a much needed spotlight on traffic trends on the Golden Ears Bridge—which are running so far behind projections that Translink now forecasts that the agency will lose between $35 and $45 million each year on the bridge for at least the next several years. But the story is really just the tip of iceberg in a much larger story about Greater Vancouver’s transportation finance woes....

My teenage nephew came to visit last summer, and I asked him if there was anything he needed from the drug store. “Uh, condoms?” he said. It was easier to ask liberal Aunt Val than Grandma, who is raising him. We hopped in the car. At the local Walgreens, we found the display and we lingered, picking packages up and putting them back. “Wow, there’s a lot of choices,” he...