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Collection: Weekend Reading

Weekend Reading 4/15/11

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Eric H:

Sightline staff are well-acquainted with the battle of the office candy jar–but could sweets be worse than we think they are? The New York Times Magazine takes a look at whether or not sugar is toxic.

Also, if you’ve got free time in Seattle next week, check out Seattle’s GoGreen conference to hear some smart people talk about sustainable business.

Eric dP:

It was as a dry spell of a reading week for me. The only bit worth highlighting was the round robin of ranting—from Roger Valdez, Martin H. Duke, and Michael van Baker—about Governor Gregoire’s use of the phrase “social engineering” in the New York Times.

Clark:

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Weekend Reading 4/8/11

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Eric dP:

My top pick this weekend is Harvard economist Robert Stavins explaining why carbon cap-and-trade systems remain the most promising vehicle for international climate progress. Despite the bad rap that cap and trade has gotten from the Tea Party and professional disinformationists, Stavins is right. Which is why I was encouraged to read this week that California and Europe plan to link their systems.

Closer to home and more fun, I absolutely loved Deborah Bach’s piece on the secret shipwrecks beneath Lake Union, which I discovered in the Seattle Times but which hails originally from Three Sheets Northwest.

Finally, a bit unconventionally, I’ll recommend something I haven’t yet gotten to yet myself: Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz writing in Vanity Fair, “Of the1%, For the 1%, and By the 1%.” It’s an exploration of the pernicious influence that severe income inequality can have on civil democracy.

Eric H:

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Weekend Reading 4/1/11

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Anna:

Who’s got the competitive edge in the growing clean energy economy? Not us! Pew shows that China is the world’s clean energy superpower, and Europe’s pouring it on too. Over at GOOD the Director of Pew’s Clean Energy Program, Phyllis Cuttino, offers her opinion on why there’s less private investment in clean energy here at home.

Is Obama losing his base of young, climate-concerned voters with his failures at energy reform and lukewarm rhetoric? Ten thousand young people who believed in the dream and worked on the campaign are storming DC to tell him to “dream bigger.”

Dr. David Suzuki celebrated his 75th birthday on March 24. Here’s a birthday interview he gave, with his thoughts on everything from science to family to our obsession with a soulless economy.

Alan:

In the everything-is-connected department, I found this Science News article fascinating. Intestinal parasites—worms—and our immune system may have co-evolved to help us escape auto-immune conditions such as asthma, Crohn’s disease, and multiple sclerosis. It’s an article that can make your skin crawl even while you wonder at the miraculous interdependence of human host and creepy parasite. The we-killed-off-the-parasites thesis is also the most plausible explanation I’ve heard to date for the enormous upsurge in allergies that’s been unfolding across the industrial countries.

I also highly recommend Knute Berger’s brief history of Seattle’s freeway politics. Portland’s urban revival story is routinely told as starting with an uprising against a neighborhood-killing highway. As Knute makes clear, Seattle’s story is actually quite similar. I grew up swimming near the “ghost exits” Berger tells of.

Eric H:

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Weekend Reading 3/25/11

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Clark:

Mostly demographics this week, folks.

The share of people in the labor force (working or looking for work) is declining—not just because of recession, but mostly because we’re aging.

Surprising: wealth inequality isn’t nearly as stark, nor increasing as fast, as income inequality. The wealth data series ends in 2000, though, so I’m not sure what’s happened since…

According to census data, the coasts continue to grow, while the Great Plains continue to lose people. I can remember when mentioning the “Buffalo Commons“—the idea of creating a vast prairie reserve in the drier Midwest—was considered fighting words in some parts of the country. But given how fast the plains are losing people, maybe the Buffalo Commons is creating itself.

Blast from the past: remember when President Bush called for the nation to “conserve gasoline and avoid non-essential driving” after gas prices briefly hit the unprecedented heights of…wait for it…$2.80 per gallon? That was 2005, folks.  By comparison, the recent runup in gas prices has barely made the headlines.  Funny how quickly we get used to high gas prices, huh?

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Weekend Reading 3/18/11

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Eric de Place

For my money, the most important reading stop to make this weekend is at citytank, Dan Bertolet’s nascent project. It’s a think tank about city issues (duh) with a tenor that is part encomium and part wonkfest. Dan’s lined up a roster of heavy hitters to do the writing, which he will no doubt complement with his own able voice. citytank. Go there now. 

Also in the transportation and land use arena, I recommend Todd Litman’s salvo, “The First Casualty in a Non-Existent War” (the war on cars, that is), and Elly Blue of Grist on tearing down urban freeways to make room for bikes. 

On energy, check out Montanan Ed Gulick as he blasts coal exporting as a major threat to his state’s prosperity. And take a look at Bonnie Frye Hemphill’s terrific short piece, “The Risky Business of Turning On the Lights,” at the Climate Solutions blog:

…history is littered with violence, repression and genocide fueled by oil and atomic bombs. But clean and efficient energy? I dare you to name the nation or paramilitary arming for war with caulking guns.

Lastly—and because I’m eating at a spendy French place tonight—I think it’s worth reading Felix Salmon unpack “The Crowded Restaurant Conundrum” for New York magazine. From there, you might like to traipse over to Vanity Fair and find A. A. Gill’s hilarious gut-buster, “Tour De Gall,” which is about the worst restaurant in the world, and why it’s so popular with the rich and famous.

Alan

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Weekend Reading 3/11/11

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From Alan:

Feebates in France have performed exceptionally well, according to Market Watch. It’s more than a decade since any Cascadian jurisdication (British Columbia) considered a similar proposal. Is it time?

The blog Plurale Tantum unveiled a fascinating examination of why people of color and bicycle advocacy don’t seem to go together. Lots to think about—and do—to build a sustainability movement that matches Cascadia’s shifting demographic profile.

WaPo’s Ezra Klein articulates what’s become my growing concern about the brokenness of the governing bodies with jurisdiction in Cascadia:

“We spend too much time debating political events and the choices leaders make and not enough time debating the structure of political institutions and the impersonal economic and systemic forces that drive the choices leaders make.”

“It’s the institutions, stupid,’ is the right way to understand most of what happens in American politics, but it’s not the way people want to understand American politics, so it’s often ignored.”

I read the 1994 article “It’s the Institutions, Stupid,” to which Klein referred. It’s a fascinating review of the shifting institutional barriers to comprehensive reforms in the American republic. The paper is a study of health care reform, but the same barriers halted comprehensive climate policy last year.

Finally, I’m enamored by 350.org’s new campaign to make clear that the US Chamber of Commerce, whatever else it is, is not the legitimate voice of business in America. More than 1,000 businesses signed a statement last week declaring that the US Chamber does not speak for them on climate. Many of those businesses are in Cascadia. I expect this number to keep rising rapidly.

From Clark:

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Weekend Reading 3/4/11

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Editor’s note: We’re trying out a new weekly post to share some of our favorite reads from the week—things concerning the Northwest, sustainability, or that are just plain entertaining. Let us know your favorites, or submit your own to editor@sightline.org. Center for Public Integrity exposes how reckless the oil industry is with workers’ lives.–Alan Evidence … Read more

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