The gist: The 2007 edition of the Cascadia Scorecard, Sightline's annual sustainability index, finds that the region lags an average of 44 years behind world leaders on the seven trends. We score worst on energy efficiency and wildlife health. And we're stalled on economic security. The good news is that we've cut back on gasoline use, we're living longer, and sprawling less.

The details: The 2007 edition of the Cascadia Scorecard--a long-term gauge of the Northwest's progress towards sustainability--shows that over the course of two and a half decades, the Northwest's score on seven key sustainability trends has slowly improved. (See chart below.)

These gains are primarily to steady improvements in health and, at least since the mid-1980s, in our efforts at curbing sprawl.

But progress has stalled in recent years. Compared with models from around the world—Japan for health, Germany for energy, and so on—Cascadia lags an average of 43 years behind.

That is, based on Scorecard estimates, it would take 43 years of slow-and-steady progress to bring Cascadia’s performance up to what those places had already achieved in 2001 or 2002.

Progress on the Scorecard has been hampered most by the three trends that have been most resistant to change. Cascadia’s energy consumption, fertility rates, and economic security are all at roughly the same levels in this year’s Scorecard as they were in 1980.

Focusing attention on those areas—particularly our overdependence on polluting sources of energy, which is both stubbornly high and furthest away from Scorecard models—would do the most to move Cascadia in the right direction.

As you can see in the chart below, the region scores worst in wildlife, energy and sprawl.

"Years" away from best-in-world (or region) level

For all Scorecard trends, the key to better performance is in innovation: new technologies, business models, and public policies that can better align Cascadia's economy and way of life with its shared aspirations. See Sightline's top solutions for the region.

For information on how Sightline developed the aggregate Scorecard, see the conclusion of the 2004 edition, Cascadia Scorecard: Seven Key Trends Shaping the Northwest (pages 68-73 of the pdf).

More resources

• Cascadia Scorecard 2007 Maps & Graphics
  
• 2007 Scorecard by the numbers
  
• What's Wrong with the GDP?
• Cascadia Scorecard 2006 press kit
• Methodology of the Scorecard