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Tunnel Vision?

 (This post is part of a series.)

A while back, the Seattle city government decided that it wanted to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct—the seismically vulnerable aerial highway that cuts off the city’s downtown from its waterfront—with a tunnel. But what neither the city, nor anyone else, has decided is how to pay for the tunnel, which the state estimates could cost more than $4 billion.

So far, the city government’s strategy seems to be something like this: the city will cobble together a billion dollars—from city tax coffers, from the Port of Seattle, from potential tolls on the new tunnel, from a real-estate improvement tax, and from wherever else it can scrape together some cash. And then the city will convince someone else–the federal government, the state, King County, and/or neighboring counties—to pick up the tab for the remaining $3+ billion.

My question:  does anyone else think this is just wildly, wildly implausible?   I’d love some responses from someone, to help correct my thinking if I’m wrong.

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Gray Is Good

"Hardened Northwest residents have learned a basic truth: Gray is beautiful." That’s Joel Connelly in today’s column in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Damp and dismal winters are the conditions that make possible our region’s abundant rivers, forests, and farms.

Connelly describes two local characteristics of climate change: receding mountain glaciers and tree-killing insect infestations in BC’s forests. And he also points to some encouraging political leadership in the region, even if progress at the federal level is sluggardly. Definitely worth a read.

What Do You Call Half a Tax Shift?

President Bush’s proposed 2006 budget would raise the price of federal electricity from Columbia River dams closer to national market rates, as the Oregonianreports.

We proposed something akin to this in Tax Shift (download pdf, read pages 67-69) in 1998: letting power prices rise and fall with the market but transferring windfall profits to the region’s governments as royalties. This, in essence, is what Alaska and, especially, British Columbia do with their fossil fuels: they sell them at full price but claim what economists call the “rent”-unearned profit-for the treasury. In exchange for higher electric prices, residents of the region would get reductions in other state taxes, along with the more-efficient energy system and more-productive economy that would result.

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Article of the Day

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer wins my article of the day award today for its piece on the federal case filed against W.R. Grace & Co. for its mismanagement of asbestos-contaminated minerals in Libby, Montana. The PI first broke this story in 1999 and today’s installment is an excellent update.

The story is a double reminder. First, cleaning up toxic messes is hundreds of times more costly, in terms of money and human lives, than preventing them in the first place. Pollution prevention is conservative, and those who oppose it are anti-growth.

Second, like my last pick, the disturbing chronicle of Grace’s malfeasance shows that the profit motive is, if powerful, also amoral. Unchanneled by strong laws and strong enforcement, it can overwhelm frailer safeguards such as personal morality and professional ethics.

Better Building Bill

Good leadership in Olympia, in the form of House Bill 1272. The bill would require all new public buildings that get state funding to meet national standards for energy efficiency.

The U.S. Green Building Council’s standards, called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), rate commercial construction on a variety of measures (pdf) of sustainability. HB 1272 would mandate that state-funded public buildings meet LEED’s "silver" rating (the second most permissive of four LEED standards).

Green buildings have a demonstrated ability to reduce energy consumption. They promote better environmental practices. And they can be darn nice buildings to boot, as the Seattle Post-Intelligencerpointed out yesterday. According to the P-I, the bill’s primary opponent is the timber industry, on the grounds that green building standards discriminate against timber. But they don’t.

In fact, LEED certification awards points for using certain kinds of timber—namely, timber with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) label. FSC labeling is smart for a bevy of reasons: it promotes good (and secure) jobs in forestry, it’s easier on forest ecosystems, and it strengthens local economies. And FSC certification makes good business sense too. Public land managers, like Fort Lewis, and private land managers, like Idaho’s Potlatch Corporation, have certified large-scale forest holdings.

The timber industry’s argument is especially perverse in an increasingly globalized timber market. In fact, FSC labeling (and the LEED rating that encourages builders to use FSC wood) can actually promote a healthier local forestry sector. Because the FSC label is international, it can hold foreign timber operations to a higher standard of conduct if they want to market their timber to publicly funded buildings in Washington state. And in the meantime, there are increasing numbers of certified forest managers right here in the Northwest.

The House budget committee votes on HB 1272 on Thursday, February 10. Here’s to hoping it passes.

I Broke Kyoto

I took up Alan’s challenge to see whether I personally met the Kyoto protocol’s targets by reducing my climate-warming emissions below 1990 levels.

The result: a miserable failure.  Sorry, everyone, I broke Kyoto.

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Have YOU Ratified the Kyoto Protocol?

On Wednesday, February 16, the Kyoto Protocol will come into effect, mandating participating nations to reduce their emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases. Canada has ratified Kyoto. The United States has not.

Have you?

Not literally, of course. Individuals can’t sign international treaties. They can, however, pledge to match its goals (summarized by World Resources Institute): a reduction of emissions in the United States to 7 percent below-and in Canada to 6 percent below-the 1990 level by 2008-2012.

Fifteen Cascadian localities have signaled their intent to follow or approximate Kyoto, as you can see in this list maintained by the International Center for Local Environmental Initiatives. (Overall, unfortunately, Cascadia’s CO2 emissions have climbed by about 19 percent since 1990, as we documented in This Place on Earth 2002 (download the book, read pages 47-50).

Inspired by this leadership, I decided to make the pledge myself. A few days ago, I solemnly swore-OK, not so solemnly, but I did swear-I would reduce my family’s emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases by at least 7 percent below our 1990 level.

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Doomed to Repeat the Past?

Did the dinosaurs die out because of global warming? Well, sort of.

In an op-ed in Sunday’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Peter Ward, a University of Washington professor of biology and earth and space sciences, takes a look at climate change through the unlikely lens of paleontology. Ward points out that prehistoric volcanic eruptions released enough carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere to radically alter the planet’s climate, resulting in serious ecosystem disturbances and extinctions.

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Article of the Day

If you read just one news article today, it should be Timothy Egan’s New York Timespiece on Enron’s manipulation of the California electricity market—a story unearthed by lawyers for the Snohomish Public Utility District.

Go read it!

Migratious Goodness

According to state estimates, Washington gained more new residents (careful, link goes to a pdf) from natural increase than from migration between 2000 and 2004.  (For you data geeks out there, it’s about 138,000 new residents from natural increase—births minus deaths—and 134,000 from net migration, which is typically to and from other parts of the U.S.) The trend of more births than new migrants was particularly strong in King County, Seattle’s home, which gained four times as many new residents from natural increase as from migration.

In one way, the fact that births outpaced migration shouldn’t be surprising:  the economy wasn’t exactly going gangbusters for most of the past quadrennium, and high unemployment rates may have kept away some newcomers. 

But in another way, it is a surprise.  Like the country as a whole, Washington is at a temporary birthing lull.  The baby boomers have largely aged past their reproductive peak, and the relatively scanty "baby bust" generation of the 1970s has entered theirs.

So it was a slow period for both births and migration—which means that the four years from 2000 to 2004 saw among the slower rates of population increase for the state in recent memory—just a little over 1% per year.  However, "slow" for Washington is still very, very fast—fast enough to double the state’s population in just a little over 60 years, well before today’s toddlers reach retirement age.