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This was the year of small but significant percentages: 1 percent or less. I’m speaking not only of Washington’s governor race, the Montana legislative elections, or the Ohio presidential vote tally. I’m speaking of budding trends toward a durable way of life in Cascadia. The region reached the vicinity of 1 percent on a number of heartening, if incipient, measures during the past twelve months. In British Columbia’s Fraser Basin-the...

There’s end-of-the-year good news for almost everyone who breathes in Cascadia: particulate pollution is mostly declining, as is ground-level ozone pollution. EPA released its Particle Pollution Reportlast week, which summarizes trends in concentrations of particulates: tiny specks of airborne pollution. Don’t think of happy little flecks like in Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who. Think of nasty little killers. Aside from cigarette smoke (a form of pollution that roughly a...

British Columbia’s Fraser Basin Council just released its Sustainability Snapshot 2 (large pdf). The resulting report is a frustrating piece of work. It’s rich with information but fails to tell a clear story that makes sense of it all. So, here-in two points-is my distillation. 1. There’s plenty of progress to be proud of! Air quality in the Fraser River Basin is not too bad, and it’s mostly getting better....

So a guy walks into a restaurant, and asks what kind of pies they have.  The waitress says they have apple and blueberry.  He orders a slice of apple pie.  The waitress goes into the kitchen, then comes back out and and says, "Sir, the cook says we have cherry pie, too."  "Well, in that case," says the diner, "I’ll take the blueberry." That nerdy joke, attributed to Columbia philosophy...

One important but little discussed difference between the Canadian and American parts of Cascadia is their different philosophies about trash. This difference has emerged in the last decade. And, sad to say, the Canadians have left the Americans in the dustbin, so to speak. British Columbia has adopted a far less regulatory, government-centered approach, even while they’ve made dramatic gains in waste reduction and recycling. I’m talking here about “product...

Statistics Canada has issued a new report (covered here in the Vancouver Sun) that shows that BC residents are lazy. No, just kidding.  But it does say that residents of the province work nearly 300 fewer hours per year, on average, than their counterparts in Alberta.  That’s an average of an hour less per work day.  Among Canadians, only Quebec and Newfoundland residents work fewer hours than British Columbians. The...

"I hope teenagers are not sexually active, but hoping is not a good birth-control method." That’s the clincher in this excellent Seattle Timesarticle on Washington’s effort to improve its sex education programs statewide. This subject gets stunningly little attention from the media, but it’s a big deal. And it’s one place where the culture war rages in Cascadia. British Columbia has comprehensive, medically accurate sex ed in all its secondary...

British Columbia’s rather unique Citizen’s Assembly on Voting Reform has recommended an overhaul of the province’s voting system.  And this Tyee article mocks its recommendation for selecting provincial legislators through a system known as the Single Transferable Vote, or STV.  The mockery is easy—but misguided. The basic idea of STV (and its close cousin, Instant Runoff Voting) is that voters can rank candidates in preference order.  Thus the Citzen’s Assembly...

In American Cascadia, as in the rest of the United States, the 2004 general election was hard fought, bitter, and emotional. It brought unprecedented levels of spending, advertising, grassroots organizing, and turnout. It was as divisive an election as any in, well, a long time. Some commentators point to 1968. Others go back a century before finding an election as closely fought and deeply passionate. I’ll leave it to historians...

As if airlines didn’t have enough to worry about, an AP story on a new government study notes that America’s obesity epidemic is yet another drag on the industry. More pounds per passenger equals increasing fuel costs (which increases environmental costs, too, as you can see in this backgrounder). A couple of morsels: Through the 1990s, the average weight of Americans increased by 10 pounds, according to the Centers for...