Even the best-intended rules become outdated. In June 2011, Sightline began rooting out laws that were past their prime. To date, we’ve compiled 16 case studies—and 3 success stories—into this report.

The Making Sustainability Legal project is continuing to check the expiration dates on a slew of regulations. By updating or eliminating rules that should have died long ago, we can pursue smarter solutions that fit today’s reality—and the Northwest can grow more affordable, fair, and sustainable.

Download Making Sustainability Legal Executive Summary

Read the Making Sustainability Legal blog series.

Life expectancy—the average number of years a newborn can expect to live, given current patterns of mortality—is perhaps the best single gauge of a population’s health. The lifespan measurement integrates all maladies that can shorten lifespans, from infant mortalities to heart disease to traffic accidents to cancer. National and international comparisons show strong correlations between life expectancy and other measures of health, such as the number of years people live free of disability, rates of preventable illness, and even people’s satisfaction with their own health. Life expectancy is measured consistently throughout the region, and official figures are reported with minimal delay—making it ideally suited for comparing the health of different populations.

Within Cascadia, health has improved unevenly. British Columbia has long been the healthiest jurisdiction in the region, but in the last three decades it has expanded its lead over the Northwest states. Today, residents of BC can expect 82.8 years of life on average, topping all other North American states and provinces. If the province were an independent nation, it would rank among the most healthy countries in the world, trailing only the likes of Japan.

British Columbia’s healthiest residents live in south of the province. The healthiest jurisdiction in British Columbia–and in Cascadia overall–is the suburban city of Richmond, BC, where lifespans exceed 84 years. That’s higher than in Japan, and also higher than those of any major county in the United States.

Residents of southern British Columbia have the region's longest lifespans. Map updated in 2007, based on data from CDC Wonder and BCStats.

The Northwest states don’t fare as well, with average lifespans trailing BC’s by nearly three years. The Northwest counties with the longest lifespans–Washington County, Oregon, and King County, Washington — aren’t even standouts among populous US counties.

British Columbians’ success in leading long, healthy lives results not from one single cause, but from many. None of the province’s inhabitants goes without health insurance–unlike the one in seven residents of the Northwest states who do so currently (though recent changes in US health policy may narrow that gap). BC also has lower rates of violent deaths: fewer homicides and also fewer fatal car crashes, the latter largely due to compact communities that allow residents to drive less. And the province also has lower rates of severe obesity than the Northwest states. Differences in economic security may play a role as well: income and wealth gaps between the rich and the poor are narrower in British Columbia than in the Northwest states. Around the world, wide gaps between haves and have-nots tend to be associated with poor health.

The recent efforts by the US government to improve access to health care may bear fruit in the years to come, improving lifespans for residents of the Northwest states. But improving access to medical care is only part of the solution to a healthier population. Just as important are more systemic changes that keep us healthy without medical intervention. Redesigning our neighborhoods so that we can walk more and drive less, for example, would help promote regular exercise, limit deaths and injuries from car crashes, and reduce air pollution. Similarly, taking steps to reduce poverty could alleviate economic and social strains that contribute to poor health.

Yet these trends were minor, compared with the massive fertility spike of the baby boom, when Northwest fertility rates peaked at nearly 4 lifetime births per woman. Since the mid-1970s Northwest fertility rates have remained fairly stable, ranging between 1.8 and 2.0 total births over a woman’s lifetime.

A fertile population may seem like a sign of prosperity. Yet the reverse is more typically true: the world’s wealthy nations tend to have far lower rates of fertility than do struggling ones. Rapid population growth—to which high fertility contributes—can be both a cause and a symptom of economic woes. It can also strain natural ecosystems, by increasing the consumption of water, energy, and other natural resources.

Fertility rates also merit attention since they correlate strongly with the well-being of women and families. In places where women have more control over important life decisions, better access to techniques for pregnancy prevention, more economic and educational opportunities, and greater equality, women tend to delay childbearing and choose smaller families. In Sweden and the Netherlands, for example—places with robust support for families, including generous parental leave policies; where women have high levels of personal, political, and educational achievement; and where unintended pregnancies are rare—fertility rates are typically in the range of 1.7 lifetime births per woman.  Although Cascadia’s overall fertility rates are close to these levels, the Northwest states still struggle with high rates of births from unintended pregnancies; between 35 and 40 percent of births in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington result from pregnancies that came earlier than the mother had intended, or that weren’t wanted at all.

A century ago, the women of the Pacific Northwest had little control over their own lives. They were too often subject to the decisions of their fathers and husbands, and had few choices about their life paths. Lacking effective contraception, they typically started large families early in life.

But those patterns have changed. Since the peak of the baby boom in the late 1950s, Cascadians have gradually shifted toward smaller families that come later in life, particularly as educational and job opportunities have opened up for women, and as medical advances and cultural shifts have given women more control over their own fertility.

Teen births in particular have experienced a massive decline—though an uneven one. The teen birth rate ticked upwards in the late 1980s, then reversed direction in the early 1990s to resume its long-term decline.  British Columbia has led the way in reducing teen births. Today, teens in the province are less than one-third as likely to give birth as are teens in the Northwest states. And all across Cascadia, teen births are now at or near all-time lows.

In another sign of delayed childbearing, birthrates among BC’s forty-somethings have now overtaken the birthrate among teens. Thirty-somethings remain the province’s most fertile demographic, and now have higher birth rates than for all other ages combined.

Fertility varies considerably throughout Cascadia. Cascadia’s large cities have the smallest families: women in Vancouver, British Columbia, average about one child each. But in Canyon County, Idaho, and Yakima County, Washington, women average 2.7 births over their lifetimes.

In 1970, birthrates in British Columbia and the Northwest states were fairly evenly matched: women in both regions averaged about 2.4 lifetime births per woman. Since then, however, the regions have pulled apart, with BC women choosing smaller families than their counterparts south of the 49th parallel. As of 2011, women in British Columbia had reduced fertility to 1.4 lifetime births, while women in the Northwest states could expect 1.9 births over their lifetimes.

Cascadia has many opportunities to shift towards smaller families, later in life. More than one-third of all births (as well as virtually all abortions) in the Northwest states stem from unintended pregnancies—those that occur earlier than desired, or that were not desired at all. Children conceived intentionally are healthier, display superior verbal development in their early years, suffer less often from abuse and neglect, are less likely to enter foster care or to be charged with a crime—which makes the goal of preventing unwanted pregnancies one that Cascadians of diverse values can get behind.

Walkable Communities are Climate-Friendly

• Cars and trucks are the Northwest’s single largest source of climate-warming emissions. Compact, walkable neighborhoods allow families to make fewer trips in their cars, travel less to meet their everyday needs – and thus reduce their contribution to global warming.
• The air in your car may be some of the worst you’ll breathe all day. Busy highway traffic turns roadway air into a “tunnel of pollution,” exposing drivers to high levels of benzene, fine soot, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and other pollutants from vehicle exhaust. (Rank, Jette; Folke, Jens; Jespersen, Per Homann. “Differences in Cyclists and Car Drivers Exposure to Air Pollution from Traffic in the City of Copenhagen” The Science of the Total Environment 2001; v.279; pp.131-136.)

Walkable Neighborhoods Promote Safety

• Residents of sprawling neighborhoods drive longer distances, and spend more time overall in their cars, than do residents of more compact neighborhoods. All else being equal, the more one drives, the greater one’s risk. (NHTS; Victoria Transport Policy Institute, “Safe Travels: Evaluating Mobility Management)
• King County—the most urbanized county in Washington—has the lowest overall crash risk of any county in the state.

Walkable Neighborhoods Give You Time Back!

• Walking 30 minutes a day, five days a week, adds 1.3-1.5 years to your life, on average. This means that for every minute you spend walking, you get three back.
• People who live in the most-walkable neighborhoods are 2.4 times as likely to walk for 30 minutes or more than those who lived in the least-walkable communities.
• Residents of traditional neighborhoods, with good pedestrian facilities and stores and services just a short walk from people’s homes, get 70 extra minutes of physical activity per week, and are 40 percent less likely to be overweight or obese than residents of sprawling neighborhoods. (Brian E. Saelens, “Neighborhood-Based Differences in Physical Activity: An Environment Scale Evaluation,” American Journal of Public Health, Sept. 2003, v.93, n.9)

Also see:

• What’s Walkable?
• Sprawl and Health Connections
• The Research: Studies on Health and Sprawl
• Posts on Sightline Daily about Walkscore, which rates cities and neighborhoods for walkability

“The wonders represent opportunity, simple things ordinary people can make to make a difference in their own lives and in their communities, things that collectively hold the hope of surprising benefit.” — Craig McInnes, Vancouver Sun

Released April 24, 2008 (see press release here)

Order Book.

What do a clothesline, a locally grown tomato, and a microchip have in common? According to Sightline’s new book Seven Wonders for a Cool Planet, these are ordinary things that, with widespread use, can have an extraordinary impact on the fight against global warming, one of the most urgent challenges facing life on Earth in this century.

But Seven Wonders is much more than another book of tips. The book, by award-winning journalist Eric Sorensen and the staff of Sightline Institute, sheds new light on our relationships to the world we inhabit and offers a powerful template for personal and public action.

Each wonder is profiled in a short, lively chapter that is also a springboard for exploring the key issues behind global warming and how to design sustainability into the very heart of our lives, communities, and economies. Here’s a quick summary:

• “The Bicycle” is an ode to the most energy-efficient vehicle ever devised–and a transportation solution whose promise is just starting to be realized. (Read bicycle fact sheet here.)
• “The Condom” examines how a little more “wrapping-up” could have a big impact.
• “The Ceiling Fan” shows that energy efficiency isn’t just a free lunch. “It’s a lunch you are paid to eat.”
• “The Clothesline” starts with a six-dollar piece of rope and ends with the vast potential of renewable energy.
• “The Real Tomato” uses the well-traveled vegetable to examine how to make agriculture greener. (Read excerpt here.)
• “The Library Book” shows why “reuse” is the most important of the “three R’s.”
• “The Microchip” is a testament to how the virtual world can benefit our real-world climate. (Read excerpt here.)

Where to purchase Seven Wonders: you can buy copies of Seven Wonders for a Cool Planet directly from Sierra Club Books, your local bookstore, or online from bookstores such as Amazon.

Note: Seven Wonders is an update of a 1999 book by Sightline, published by Sierra Club Books.

See Also:

Fact Sheet: Seven Wonders for a Cool Planet

Press Release: Seven Wonders for a Cool Planet Released

Excerpt: The Microchip

Excerpt: The Real Tomato

Four strategies to encourage healthier communities, based on the research from the Cascadia Scorecard.

The details:

Sprawling suburbs—where a car is necessary for virtually every trip—are taking their toll on the health of northwesterners. The extra driving and physical inactivity associated with sprawl have been linked to major health risks, such as more than 2,000 car-crash fatalities a year in the Northwest, and obesity rates that have doubled since the 1990s. Communities that have curbed sprawl tend to have lower rates of obesity and chronic illness, and residents drive less, which reduces the risk of a serious crash.

Individuals and institutions can take simple steps to create compact, complete communities that enable residents to get around without a car and encourage physical activity and connections among neighbors.

Create healthy communities.

Places that are compact enough to foster walking and biking tend to be healthier. And reducing driving diminishes car crash risk and limits exposure to pollution. To support healthier, safer communities, we can:

• Encourage a blend of stores and services within residential areas and a grid street design with direct routes between destinations to promote walking and biking.
• Allow infill development and accessory dwelling units (sometimes called “granny flats”), which can modestly increase density and help more people live in pedestrian-friendly places. Neighborhoods with a blend of housing types also help aging residents to stay in their community throughout their lives and maintain social connections.
• Ease parking requirements. Local land-use rules often require developers to provide overabundant parking, which makes commercial and infill development more expensive while spreading destinations farther apart.

Seattle’s “center city” strategy to attract downtown residents, and Oregon’s Damascus/Boring Concept Plan, which proposes channeling growth into a concentrated mix of homes and jobs in a well-designed core, are examples of policies that provide a wider range of options for residents that want to walk or take transit to most destinations.

Vancouver, BC, has successfully encouraged growth into a compact, walkable downtown. Partly as a result, trips by foot or bike in the city have increased about 30 percent in the last decade, and vehicle traffic declined by 10 percent. BC, which has the region’s two most compact cities, has a one-third lower fatality rate from car crashes and about half the obesity rate of the Northwest states.

Budget for health.

Road and transit planning budgets for land, labor, and materials, but doesn’t consider the potential health and economic impacts from increased traffic risk and physical inactivity related to sprawl. To account for the full cost of transportation infrastructure we can:

• Require transportation planners to investigate and incorporate the hidden health costs of building roads, from pollution to traffic deaths to inactivity. Car crashes may drain the Northwest states’ economies of approximately $8 billion per year. And the total costs of obesity and physical inactivity may top $11 billion per year in the region. A King County, Washington, project called LUTAQH, is developing an assessment tool to measure such health impacts, which will help planners make the best—and healthiest—transportation buys first.
• Invest in cost-effective features that promote safety and health including sidewalks, bike paths, traffic safety, interconnected streets, and transit.

Washington state recently adopted a policy to allow investments in active transportation such as bike paths and transit routes along with new roads and reconstruction projects in Central Puget Sound, giving citizens more healthy choices for their daily trips.

Reveal the real costs.

Taxpayers and utility rate payers often end up paying the infrastructure costs for new development such as roads, sewer lines, schools, fire stations and police, regardless of where they live or how much they drive. The true costs of new development and driving are often hidden through subsidies. To make the price of development tell the truth, we can:

• Require new development at the urban fringe to pay its own way, rather than being subsidized by taxpayers, which would encourage development of infill housing and compact communities, where infrastructure costs are lower.
• Pay-as-you-drive (PAYD) insurance, gaining traction in Oregon and Washington, is an example of making prices tell the truth about driving. PAYD would reward motorists for driving less by making buying car insurance more like buying gasoline: the less you drive, the less you pay.

Make healthy choices.

When making personal choices about where you live and work, take the health, time, and economic impacts of extra driving into account, and consider all the options.

• When you move, think about the layout of the community where you’d like to live. Are stores and services close by, or within a short ride or drive? Are the streets designed to be pedestrian-friendly? How do you want to spend your commute time—in a car, on foot, or on a bus?
• Be more active—walk and bike as a form of transportation. Burning just 10 extra calories per day—the amount burned during a 2- to 3- minute walk—can prevent a pound of weight gain per year, which is enough to keep many people from becoming overweight.
• Pay attention to community design issues and support policy changes that will make your neighborhood more walkable and complete. Talk to your friends and neighbors about the benefits of living in a compact community and support zoning that allows more transit, bike lanes, and a mix of housing and shops.

Easing requirements for parking—as some Northwest cities are doing—would make the price of parking reflect its true costs, make housing more affordable, and reward northwesterners for driving less.

The details:

Antiquated provisions in zoning and tax codes, along with misguided street designs, bloat the Northwest’s parking supply and glut the market.

The 16 most populous Northwest counties and cities all require off-street parking; suburbs require even more parking than cities. Besides distorting the cost of driving, mandated parking lowers a community’s density by 10 to 30 percent, leaving residents dependent on their cars.

In the Pacific Northwest, for example, office buildings are required to provide up to four spaces per 1,000 square feet of floor space. Retail developers devote more space to cars than to merchandise.

The resulting oceans of parking not only invite employees and customers to drive; they also discourage other modes of travel by interposing parking lots between streets and buildings and by separating the destinations people want to reach.

A few communities have recently begun shrinking parking requirements. In 2005, Seattle, for example, limited requirements for parking in downtown areas targeted for growth. Portland and Olympia have also implemented some parking reforms. A much more basic reform would be full deregulation, allowing the market to decide how much parking space to provide.

By striking all off-street parking requirements from the law books, it would be left up to property owners to decide on the amount of parking space. Many owners, especially real-estate developers, would put less land into parking and more into buildings, increasing the supply of office space and housing. With an increase in the supply, consumers could shop around for the most affordable space, causing prices to decrease.

These changes also work for existing developments. With no parking requirements, the owners of buildings now surrounded by concrete would have new choices: they could expand, sell land to others, or turn parking into plazas.

It might take 10 years to absorb excess parking space, but scarcity and a market would develop. Free parking would dwindle as higher-value uses would take over space currently devoted to car storage. And, as those who choose to drive begin to face the full costs of their decisions, driving would abate.

A few promising related reforms:

• The Northwest could eliminate inequitable tax provisions that favor driving over other forms of transportation. At present, taxes encourage employers to supply free parking by treating it as a nontaxable fringe benefit.
• Employers who offer free parking could be required to offer “cash out” policies, giving workers the option of choosing between a parking space and the parking’s dollar value in cash. Tests of this policy show that as many as two in five commuters will take the money and leave their wheels.
• If tens of millions of workers across the country left their cars at home, and tacked an extra $2,000 onto their paychecks, it could save more than a million barrels of oil a day, not to mention safeguard the livability of our communities.

More resources

Victoria Transport Policy Institute’s Parking Management Best Practices

Excerpted from This Place on Earth 2001: Guide to a Sustainable Northwest (see pdf for full details and endnotes)

We’ve been scratching in the wrong place by trying to maximize gross domestic product instead of gross national happiness.

The details:

Although the United States and Canada have traditionally used financial indicators such as GDP, the Dow Jones, and consumer confidence to measure society’s well-being, these indicators mostly tell us how much we’re spending, not whether we’re living rich and satisfying lives. In fact, new research confirms the old adage: money doesn’t buy happiness. Consider, for example, that as North Americans average incomes have soared over the last 50 years, life satisfaction has remained virtually flat—even as Americans’ mental health has plummeted.

In short, we’ve been scratching in the wrong place. We’ve been trying to maximize gross domestic product instead of gross national happiness.

Happiness research is a field populated by economists, psychologists, and other social scientists who are trying to figure out empirically sound ways to measure people’s sense of satisfaction with their lives and communities. Among their findings:

• In a ranking of life satisfaction among 10 groups, the Pennsylvania Amish were found to be as happy as members of the wealthiest sector of the United States.
• Depression rates in the United States have climbed perhaps tenfold in a span of 50 years, and the incidence of anxiety disorders has also skyrocketed.
• Beyond a certain basic level of income—enough to pay the bills—having more money does little to increase happiness. Friendships and strong social connections are much more important to long-term happiness than financial riches.

Measuring well-being—and maximizing it through policy shifts—would benefit society as a whole, not just individuals. Research suggests that happy workers are more productive, and happy people go on to earn more money, have stronger immune resistance to cold and flu viruses, suffer fewer fatal accidents, and live longer.

Happiness research has profound, far-reaching implications. A measure of human quality of life, or “subjective well-being,” could put into proper perspective such flawed indicators as the Dow and the consumer confidence index. And even more importantly, measuring human happiness would help us assess whether we’re truly creating a world in which our children and grandchildren can thrive.

Shifting to renewable energy sources and reducing the amount of energy we waste are the keys to reducing the bloated impacts of industrial nations on the climate, our pocketbooks, and our security.

The details:

The humble clothesline is simple, silent, and completely nonpolluting. It takes few materials to manufacture and require no electricity or fuel to operate. Line-dried clothes smell fresh and have no static.

And by letting the sun and wind do for free what dryers need electricity or gas for, clotheslines also save money.

Clotheslines aren’t for everyone, of course–particularly in the wet Northwest–but they’re one example of the power of renewable energy sources–and how little this power is counted. Although solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass power officially contribute less than 2 percent to current global energy supplies, we already use these renewable energy sources–the sun, above all–in unacknowledged ways.

Solar designer-philosopher Steve Baer has dubbed this “the clothesline paradox”: dry your laundry in an electric dryer, and the electricity you use is counted in conventional energy statistics, but dry your clothes on a clothesline instead, and the solar and wind energy you harness is never measured.

The sun, of course, also heats our entire world from about 400 F (240 C) below zero to livable temperatures, but we only count as “energy use” the energy required to heat or cool the insides of our buildings the last few degrees to room temperature.

Solar energy

There are many other ways to tap into the renewable energy all around us. Considering the energy used to heat water, washing a load of clothes in warm water actually uses about twice as much energy as heating the load in a dryer. (Water heating accounts for nearly 20 percent of home energy use in the United States).

Rooftop solar water heaters use the sun to heat and natural convection to pump water into a home water tank. It can take several years to recoup the initial costs of these simple but pricey systems, depending on energy prices and how much sun smiles on your home. Israel has installed nearly a million solar hot water heaters, which now provide hot water for four out of five Israeli homes.

Homes and businesses can be (and are) heated, cooled, lit, and powered by solar energy in its various forms. “Passive solar” design, such as well-placed windows and overhangs that let in warm light from the low-hanging winter sun but not from the high summer sun, can minimize or eliminate the need for heating and air-conditioning. Even in the cloudy Pacific Northwest, passive solar design can supply 65 percent of a home’s space heating. As an ad for Velux windows says of sunlight, “It traveled millions of miles to get here. The least you can do is let it in.”

The power of wind

Wind power provides less than 1 percent of world electricity, but capacity is expanding at a rate of 25 percent per year, making wind the world’s fastest growing energy source. In some regions of Europe, wind power already supplies 5 to 10 percent of electricity.

The United States was the world leader in installed wind power until recently, but pressures to cut costs in the newly deregulated utility industry have led many electric utilities to slash their spending on renewable energy and conservation.

Modern wind turbines are much quieter than their predecessors; most people cannot hear them 300 yards away. Some nature lovers fear that wind farms will endanger bird populations, but recent studies in Europe have concluded that well-designed and well-sited wind farms pose little risk to birds.

Realizing the promise of renewables will take more than concerned individuals using clotheslines or rooftop solar panels. Building market volumes enough to bring prices down will require large-scale investments.

Shifting to renewable energy sources and reducing the amount of energy we waste are the keys to reducing the bloated impacts of industrial nations on the atmosphere.

Individuals have usually lacked the power to choose renewable energy (except with actions like drying clothes in the sun), but that may soon change.

Deregulation of the utility industry, if it doesn’t extinguish renewable providers first, may soon allow electricity customers in much of North America to choose “green” power, often for a few dollars more per month. Several companies began offering “coal- and nuke-free” electricity at premium prices to test markets in 1998.

More information:

Seven Wonders for a Cool Planet: Everyday Things to Help Solve Global Warming

Sightline’s climate policy project

Feebates–a novel combination of fees and rebates–would continuously tug the entire car and truck market toward increased fuel efficiency. Which Northwest region will be the leader in adopting them?

The details:

Still awaiting their Northwest debut, feebates, a novel combination of fees and rebates, are one of the smartest ideas around for creating a market for energy-saving products.

The basic idea is elegant in its simplicity: vehicles, for example, that are more efficient than average come to the showroom carrying a rebate for their buyers. Those rebates are proportional to the efficiency of the vehicle, so superefficient vehicles come with whopping big rebates.

As average efficiency increases, the feebates reset themselves around the new average, manufacturers raise their wares’ efficiency to compete, and consumers set their sights still higher. Efficiency snowballs.

Just as other tax shifts leave government revenue unchanged, a feebate’s fees pay for its rebates. And, like other tax shifts, feebates can be powerful: the cleaner the device, the bigger the rebate; the dirtier the device, the bigger the fee.

Feebates make prices tell the truth

Feebates counteract the market’s blindness to environmental costs and three other documented market failures.

• Buyers—often choosing under pressure, as when the furnace goes out in midwinter—lack information about long-term costs.
• A “payback” gap separates consumers from producers of electricity and other resources: appliance consumers typically demand a 2-year payback for investments in greater efficiency–such as fuel-efficient cars–while electricity producers build power plants expecting only a 20-year payback.
• The motivation to minimize life-cycle costs is diluted by split incentives: landlords choose new water heaters, for example, but tenants pay the electric bills. These flaws cause massive, unnecessary investment in power plants, pipelines, and other facilities and amplify the ecological wake of daily life.

Feebates untangle these twisted incentives, with surprising results. If the United States enacted feebates on new cars of only $70 per rated mile per gallon, new-car fuel economy would rise on average about 1 percent a year.

Northwest debut?

Feebates could soon emerge from the shadows in the Northwest. The Canadian federal government gave feebates at least some consideration as part of its climate action plan. And the West Coast Governors’ Global Warming Initiative, a regional effort to combat climate change, presents the perfect political opportunity to introduce synchronized regionwide feebates on new vehicles, appliances, and other energy-using devices.

The Northwest also came close to feebates in the early 1990s when the California legislature passed a new-car feebate (which the governor eventually vetoed), structured to favor cars that were safer for local air and global climate.

Energy and water utilities in the Northwest have demonstrated the effectiveness of rebates for efficiency, but they’ve paid for these incentives from their own limited funds because they lack the authority to charge fees.