Daily Score Blog

The extraordinary rise in oil prices since 2003 has sucked hundreds of billions of dollars out of the US economy (and the Cascadian economy). High oil prices have been a contributing cause of most recessions: Since 1948, “all large oil price increases but two have been followed by recessions,” as Andrew Hoerner and Nia Robinson of Redefining Progress (RP) write (pdf). “Four of the five recessions since 1970 . . . were preceded by big jumps in oil prices.” The figure above, from the Reserve Bank of St. Louis (hat tip to RP), illustrates the point. Shaded gray bars show the recessions officially declared by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The black and blue lines show the price of oil in inflation-adjusted “real” terms and in unadjusted “nominal” terms.

What’s more, the oil price surges of the recent past helped to trigger the wave of defaults and foreclosures that revealed the overextension of US mortgage lending. High energy prices have severely strained family budgets—especially low- and moderate-income family budgets. Some of those families couldn’t afford to keep paying their mortgages and also buy gasoline.

In short, if we weren’t so addicted to oil, we would not be so vulnerable to price shocks. This fact underlines the importance of seizing the opportunity of the financial meltdown and its resulting economic downturn to break the addiction.

What happened to the Olympic Peninsula after its wolves were hunted to extinction in the 1920s? There's a fascinating new study (pdf) out on this question -- the first of its kind as far as I know. As it turns out, eliminating this one keystone species sent shockwaves through the whole ecosystem. Some of the effects were felt almost immediately after wolves were extirpated and some are only just now becoming clear.

It's a shame that reading articles like means hacking through verbiage that can feel as dense as an Olympic rainforest -- it's all "flow-induced shear stresses," "fluvial erosion," and "ungulate exclusion" -- because the study's content is incredibly important for lay people to understand. (Good ordinary language articles are here and here.) The upshot is that researchers have determined that the Olympic wolves were river-keepers, in an indirect but very real sense.

Here's how it worked. Once upon a time, healthy wolf populations kept the native elk herds lean. But when the wolves were killed off, the elk populations spiked (with a colossal and much-noticed-at-the-time boom in the 1930s). The booming elk herds spent much of their time in the lush river bottoms, cropping the living heck out of new tree growth and hammering the seedlings of cottonwood, bigleaf maple, and even some conifers. Those young trees had stabilized the banks along the region's fast-flowing rivers. And without new saplings and their fortifying root-systems, the rivers began to erode their banks, eventually channelizing and "braiding" as they spread out along the newly-unstable valley floors.

Oregon's Measure 63 -- a mosquite-bite version of the old Measure 37 plague -- is not managing to make a lot of friends. Here's a look at what newspapers around the state are saying. It isn't pretty:

The Albany Democrat-Herald recommends voting no:

...it sounds good. But it is baloney...

Building codes exist for a reason, even though sometimes they are a pain. The reason is fire and life safety. And the permit process is how the codes are carried out.

The Eugene Register-Guard says no too:

The state estimates the measure would reduce local government revenues by up to $8 million a year and state revenues by up to $750,000.

The measure is opposed by firefighters, police, EMTs, trade unions, the Oregon Building Officials Association, the Oregon Farm Bureau, the American Institute of Architects Oregon and the American Insurance Association. These and a long list of other organizations recognize that eliminating permit requirements would undermine the planning and public safety systems and deprive local and state governments of needed revenue.

Washington Mutual’s shiny new skyscraper dominates the view from Sightline’s Seattle offices; to me at least, the echoes of Ozymandias are clearly audible: "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."

WaMu, seized by bank regulators before it could go bankrupt, had saddled itself with tens of billions of dollars of bad mortgage loans. But WaMu was, just a few years ago, a proud hero of the financial industry. In 2006, I spent two weeks at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where a professor assigned my class of nonprofit leaders to study WaMu as a case study of innovative business practices. The professor lauded WaMu’s mold-breaking techniques for extending credit to high-risk borrowers. What looked innovative then looks reckless now. Still, whatever its failings, WaMu was a dynamic institution filled with whip-smart northwesterners who mostly excelled at their jobs.

The problem, to employ a church metaphor, wasn’t bad preaching, it was bad theology—the theology, in the words of Oregon forester Roy Keene, of "lots now." Like the rest of the financial crisis, the mechanisms and particulars of WaMu’s fall are opaque to me. But the fundamental principle is achingly familiar: the financial crisis is a sustainability crisis. Sustainability, at base, means "living within our means." It means, in Keene’s words, not lots now but "some forever."

Here’s the deal: From today until October 29, if you sign up for a Sightline Daily email (either Sightline Daily or the Weekly Score), you’ll be entered to win a three-day, two-night getaway for two to Vancouver, BC. We’re calling it the “Escape to Vancouver Sweepstakes.”

Just click here to sign up and be entered in the drawing.

On Friday, Paul Krugman summed up the economic news:

As recently as three weeks ago it was still possible to argue that the state of the U.S. economy, while clearly not good, wasn’t disastrous — that the financial system, while under stress, wasn’t in full meltdown and that Wall Street’s troubles weren’t having that much impact on Main Street.

But that was then.

The financial and economic news since the middle of last month has been really, really bad. . . . Indicators of financial stress have soared to the equivalent of a 107-degree fever, and large parts of the financial system have simply shut down.

Over the weekend, things deteriorated further as news spread of plummeting consumer spending, imploding credit markets, and bank collapses in Europe. The worse-case scenario of an economic free fall, like a jet stalling in mid-flight, is starting to seem less farfetched.

With this post, we are launching a Daily Score series to monitor and comment on the economic crisis and its implications for Cascadia’s jobs, businesses, and communities; for our climate; and for our shared natural heritage. Neither I nor anyone else at Sightline has great expertise on financial institutions. Consequently, we will not plumb the depths of the big-money netherworld: hedge funds, derivatives, counterparty risk, and the tangled web of collateral debt swapping. Instead, we want to understand what the crisis and resulting recession mean for Cascadia. More important, we want to explore what we northwesterners ought to do, both as individuals and especially as communities.

Our friends at Climate Solutions have a big new report out today. It's called "Carbon-Free Prosperity 2025: How the Northwest Can Create Jobs, Enable Energy Independence, and Be a Global Clean-Energy Leader."

From the press release:

 A new study concludes that five emerging clean-tech industry sectors offer the Pacific Northwest one of the best opportunities for sustained economic vitality and job growth. It also charts the course for private and public investment and leadership to capitalize on the opportunity.  
 
The study focuses on five clean-energy sectors that provide the best opportunities for Oregon and Washington to build a leadership position in intellectual capital and job creation. They are: 

• Solar PV Manufacturing, which is projected to provide up to 22,560 new jobs in  the region by 2025;
• Wind Power Development, expected to reach up to 6,000 new jobs; 
• Green Building Design Services, creator of up to 16,834 new jobs; 
• Sustainable Bioenergy, which could account for 10,419 new jobs; and
• Smart-Grid Technologies, an industry that could create up to 7,000 new jobs.

In all, the study find these industries have the potential to create more than 63,000 new jobs in the Pacific Northwest by 2025 — a figure that matches the employment in Silicon Forest during its height as a chip manufacturing center. The growth of these clean-tech sectors would position the region as a leader in the dramatic global shift toward cleaner and more efficient forms of energy, transportation, and building systems that reduce pollution and reliance on volatile imported fossil fuels.

Read all about it here. Big fat pdf here.

Apparently, everybody loves clean coal. Barack Obama loves it and John McCain loves it. Joe Biden really loved it during his VP debate -- and Sarah Palin loved it too.

But here's the problem. Clean coal is very much like a unicorn: it doesn't exist.

And because it doesn't exist, it will not save us from climate change.

Via Kate Sheppard, Carolyn Auwaerter of 1Sky nails it:

"Clean coal" is a contradiction in terms. Conventional coal-burning power plants are the leading cause of global warming pollution in the United States. Coal lobbyists will immediately reply that they can develop coal plants in the future that will capture and sequester carbon pollution.

But this is misleading. Carbon capture and sequestration is unproven, dangerous, and exorbitantly expensive. At best, the technology will not be commercially available until 2030 and the U.S. Department of Energy calculates that installing carbon capture systems will almost double plant costs, which won't provide any relief to Americans' soaring utility bills.

Exactly.

Allow me to elaborate. There are basically two meanings of "clean coal." The first is new conventional coal plants, which can indeed be more efficient and cleaner than the awful old ones. But even the new ones are a disaster. New coal plants are "clean" in the same way that it's "healthy" to switch from Marlboro Reds to Camel Lights.

“Buy one, Daddy!” That’s what my daughter Kathryn said after her recent ride behind Daily Score reader Jay Morrison on his all-electric scooter. Jay’s Vectrix captured her fifteen-year-old heart. Just seeing it roll up in front of the house sent her scurrying to her closet for her most Italian-looking scarf, which then fluttered in the breeze as she toured the neighborhood. She rhapsodized about being picked up from soccer practice in such style. (Apparently, being picked up on my tandem is déclassé.)

Car-less I remain, but as my kids’ peak soccer season (and peak Zip-car bills) overtake me, I’ve been thinking about motor scooters. Apparently, I’m not alone: motor scooters are selling like never before in the Northwest. In fact, last year and this year to date, two-wheeler sales (including both scooters and motorcycles) are outpacing sales of passenger cars even in auto-friendly Boise and surrounding Ada County, Idaho.

Far from Cascadia:

Australia, Japan, and Switzerland are designing carbon cap-and-trade systems—the Australian one may auction 100 percent of permits.

The European Union is gearing up to add aviation fuels to its carbon cap-and-trade system in 2012—a global first.

Canada’s federal election rages on over the Liberal Party’s proposed carbon tax shift.

And green taxes are getting serious attention in Hungary, Sri Lanka, and Tanzania.

All this more in the latest edition of my favorite newsletter: Green Budget News.

Ready for your weekend reading!

Unsurprisingly, the US Congress tucked a few goodies into the financial bailout bill that passed today.  Surprisingly, one of those goodies is actually good for bike commuters. Yes, the Bicycle Commuter Act, which gives incentives for employers whose employees bike to work, just became law!

There's a great rundown of what it all means over here.  But in a nutshell:

The Bicycle Commuter Act gives employers $20 a month tax relief for each employee who bicycles to work. It covers the cost of employer reimbursements to employees for buying, improving or repairing a bicycle or paying for bike parking.

It was first introduced some seven years ago by Congressman Earl Blumenauer of Portland. The Democrat opposes the bailout and voted against it on Friday, putting himself in the...position of voting against his pet project.

Looks like the sort of thing that could give a slight boost for bike-to-work programs.  Of course, the effects are likely pretty modest -- an independent taxpayer group pegged it at a cost of $10 million, which in a nation as huge as the US isn't a big deal.  Still, it's a help -- and at this point, I'll take any good news I can get.

The House has just passed the $700 billion economic bailout package, clearing the way for the crisis-induced legislation to be signed by President Bush. But what happens next?

I’m no economist, but certainly this is a big, huge wake up call that the “same-old, same-old” is not working for American families. My point is that now, more than ever, we should be talking about how we’re going to stabilize our economy for real. Now, more than ever, we should do everything it takes to free every American family from the vise grip of fossil fuels and seize an enormous opportunity to invest in a stable and healthy clean energy economy.

Earlier this week, in a column titled "Green the Bailout," Thomas Friedman summed it up perfectly (channeling Van Jones):

The point is, we don’t just need a bailout. We need a buildup. We need to get back to making stuff, based on real engineering not just financial engineering...

Indeed, when this bailout is over, we need the next president — this one is wasted — to launch an E.T., energy technology, revolution with the same urgency as this bailout. Otherwise, all we will have done is bought ourselves a respite, but not a future. The exciting thing about the energy technology revolution is that it spans the whole economy — from green-collar construction jobs to high-tech solar panel designing jobs. It could lift so many boats.

This is fascinating. It's a hidden wildlife camera tracking grizzly bears in Montana. And this one captures 5 minutes of a single wolf harrassing a momma grizzly and her two cubs. By the end of the cilp, it almost looks like the wolf wants to play.

(It's the second most fascinating wildlife video I've ever seen.)

I'd meant to do a post about John McCain's bizarre fixation with grizzly bear DNA. The whole complaint is basically fraudulent -- and I'll write about it later -- but I got sidetracked by these remote camera videos.

Update 10/3: Well, I see my thunder's been stolen on this one. On the hustings, McCain has repeatedly used a $3 million dollar funding earmark for grizzly bear DNA as evidence of the worst kind of pork barrel spending. I was going to blow up this claim as patently absurd, but it's already been done by Bill Schneider at New West (and reprinted at Crosscut); and by John Aloysius at US News and World Report; and by Eric Olson at Scienceline; and by Coco Ballantyne at Scientific American; by the editorial board at the New York Times; and probably about a dozen other places too. But the best one may be this piece by Joel Achenbach at the Washington Post.

The upshot: the $3 million was an extremely cost-effective way to calculate grizzly populations in some rugged areas of western Montana. Biologists turned up more grizzlies than anyone expected: in short, the money revealed the suprising health of one of our nation's most magnificent endangered species. Now, officials are evaluating various "de-listing" proposals. Plus, John McCain actually voted for the bill. But whatever.

Mostly, I'm just bummed that I didn't get to use the title I had cooked up: "Grizzly Bears: The Other White Meat?"

Photo by Tom Smith, US Geological Survey

In my post last Fall on Rob Lowe’s plug-in hybrid, I argued that in the absence of a cap on greenhouse gas emissions, switching to plug-in hybrids might actually be worse for the climate than just switching to regular hybrids. I no longer believe that. Electric vehicles are winners for the climate in the Northwest.

According to a study released today by the US Conference of Mayors, green jobs "could be the fastest-growing segment of the United States economy over the next several decades and dramatically increase its share of total employment."

As the Seattle P-I reports, Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, the conference's president, said the report makes "a very compelling economic argument for investing in the green economy and that we're going to get a huge return for it."

Indeed. The study cautions that these numbers won't be realized without "an aggressive shift away from traditional fossil fuels toward alternative energy and a significant improvement in energy efficiency." From the P-I:

For example, it assumes that by 2038 alternative energy will account for 40 percent of electricity production with half of that coming from wind and solar; widespread retrofitting of buildings to achieve a 35 percent reduction in electricity use; and 30 percent of motor fuels coming from ethanol or biodiesel.

"These are things we have to do," Mayor Diaz told an AP reporter over the phone, adding that "Washington [DC] needs to get on the train."