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Looking for something else, I ran across this fact about SUVs: In 2001, the death rate for people in SUVs was 3.5 percent higher than for people in cars, say figures released Tuesday by the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. This runs counter to the intuition of many SUV buyers, who think their massive vehicles are safer than shorter, squatter roadsters. Apparently, the benefits of size—namely, “winning” in a collision with...

This fascinating article in Harvard Magazine summarizes some of the latest research on obesity and inactivity-one of the most important health trends of the decade in Cascadia. (Check if you’re too heavy on the calculator here.) Some snippets to convince you to read it: Two-thirds of American adults are overweight, and half of these are obese. . . [and] up to 80 percent of American adults should weigh less than...

Most northwesterners believe that governments pay for roadwork from gas tax revenue. And they’re right about the federal and state/provincial level. But they’re wrong about city and county road spending. That comes out of property and sales taxes. Regionwide, we spend several hundred million local, general-fund dollars a year on the infrastructure for cars and trucks. (Read details here.) A citizen panel in Seattle has studied the city’s roads and...

The long-term weather forecast looks like fire across the American West. The Seattle PI notes: “In Washington, the state Department of Natural Resources already has fought 70 small fires this year, up from the usual 20, and forests are as dry as they typically are in late July or early August. “In Oregon, snowpack in the Cascades fell from 120 percent of average in early March to just 53 percent...

I was going to prepare a post on a couple of new studies on breastfeeding that came out the past couple of weeks—one showing breastfeeding lowers the risk of infant mortality by 20 percent, the other showing that breastfeeding in infancy helps prevent obesity later in life. But when I went to Google News to find some press accounts of the studies, it turned out I missed a couple. Another...

The annual costs of added health care and lost productivity that stem from lack of exercise (and the resulting obesity) in British Columbia are pegged at $347-$647 million by a new study. Call it half a billion dollars a year. That’s about 0.3 percent of annual economic output. And it doesn’t count the real toll: about 6 percent of premature deaths in the province each year. The Northwest states do...

For fans of tax shifting, here’s a fascinating case study: cigarette taxes in New York City. The combined city, state, and federal tax rate on a pack of cancer sticks in Gotham almost quadrupled from 88 cents in late 1999 to $3.39 by the middle of 2002. By the middle of 2003, smoking had been outlawed in bars, restaurants, and many other workplaces and public places. And the city launched...

The three West Coast governors-Arnold Shwarzenegger of California, Ted Kulongoski of Oregon, and Gary Locke of Washington—are moving forward with a global warming initiative first initialed by ex-governor Gray Davis of California. And their policy advisors have assembled a first batch of plans for public comment. Read and comment here. Unfortunately, boldness is largely absent from the first draft. The proposals are modest gestures like buying hybrid cars for state...

I ran across this the other day from researchers with the U.S. National Institutes of Health (emphasis added). Based on research showing that uninsured adults are 25 percent more likely to die than insured adults, we estimate that about 18,000 Americans age 25 to 64 may die prematurely each year because they lack insurance coverage and access to the effective health care that it can provide. Now, in one way...

BC continues to rack up impressive numbers in smart growth: its booming home-construction economy is producing three times as much multifamily housing as detached, single-family housing. Construction of multi-family housing in greater Vancouver reached an all-time high of some 1,900 apartments, condominiums, and townhouses in April. Construction of detached, single-family houses trailed at under 600 units. The largest increases were in the city of Vancouver and in neighboring Burnaby, while...