fbpx
Menu Close

Energy Security

The little-noted vulnerability to terrorism of Cascadia’s energy systems-and solutions to this problem-is a theme of Cascadia Scorecard 2005, which we’ll release in a month.

We can’t yet reveal what we say in the book, but this week has brought three news items that provide hints:

1. The FBI reports that “jihadists” trained in Afghan terrorist training camps are living in Oregon, according to the Seattle Times.

2. California’s attorney general has petitioned the US government to tighten security at nuclear power plants, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. (Cascadia’s sole operating power reactor is on the Hanford Reservation in Washington.)

3. Proposals to build liquefied natural gas terminals on Cascadia’s coast, as on other North American coasts, are raising fierce opposition because of their vulnerability to attack. Rare LNG leaks are potentially explosive on a massive scale, as the San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Post-Intelligencer report. (On the other hand, natural gas is a better alternative than coal or oil, and North American supplies are waning. So importing the fuel from abroad, on LNG tankers, has some tremendous up sides.)

Fortunately, the region’s energy vulnerability is a problem whose solution unleashes a torrent of benefits.

Of Motion and Emotion

I guess I touched a nerve: more people expressed an opinion about my posts on the Prius and the potential benefits of hybrid SUVs than about anything I’d written before.

My question is:  why? 

(more…)

Snow Business II

It’s late January, do you know where your skis are? Well, it doesn’t really matter because practically every ski area in the Northwest is still closed on account of the incredibly scarce snow. Snoqualmie, Stevens, Baker, White Pass, Mt. Hood Meadows, and Mt. Hood Skibowl–Closed. All of them. Crystal, at Mount Rainier, is partially open. The shuttered ski areas are an ominous indication of climate change.

But there’s a modicum of good news for skiers who like snow. As an alert reader of my earlier post on this subject pointed out, Northwest ski areas are industry leaders in addressing climate change by promoting renewable energy. The Bonneville Environmental Foundation is sponsoring a very cool program called SkiGreen. For a mere $2 skiers can purchase "Mini-GreenTags" that support 100-kilowatt hours of clean wind energy (which releases no planet-warming carbon dioxide), offsetting the energy used driving to the ski area.

Cascadian Forest Service

The US National Forest system turns 100 this year, as today’s San Francisco Chroniclereports. (The precise centenial birthday is either February 1 or March 3, depending on your intepretation of events.) The article focuses on policy changes in the Forest Service, which today faces a welter of pressures related to logging, forest fires, off-road vehicle use, grazing, watershed degradation, and invasive species.

National forest issues are critical to Cascadia. In fact, roughly half of the US portions of Cascadia are in national forest. That makes the Forest Service easily the largest land manager in the US Northwest. It also means that the long-term ecological prospects for Cascadia hinge, in large measure, on Forest Service policy.

By the same token, Cascadia is a vital component of the national forest system. Cascadia encompasses 45 percent of all national forest lands. Oregon, Washington, and Idaho collectively boast one-quarter of the nation’s total (and Idaho alone has about 1 acre in 9 of all Forest Service land).

A caveat: The figures above are this morning’s back of the envelope calculations. They’re roughly right, but they’re rough.

UPDATE: I made a numerical gaff earlier. Approximately 40 percent of the US Northwest is under Forest Service ownership, not half.

California, Here We Come? VI

Saturday’s Seattle Post-Intelligencerreported some great news: strong prospects in Olympia to adopt California’s clean-car standards.

(Follow our trail backwards on this, starting here, here, and here.)

What will Oregon do?

NEW Math

In yesterday’s post on car choices, I mentioned something that at least one reader found counterintuitive:  that increasing automobile efficiency has diminishing returns.  All else being equal, switching from a 15-mpg SUV to a 30-mpg car is twice as beneficial as switching from a 30 mpg car to a gas-sipping, 60-mpg hybrid.

Here’s why.  Let’s say you’re taking a trip that’s 60 miles long.  The SUV burns 4 gallons of gas  (60/15=4).  The car burns 2 gallons—saving 2 gallons vs. the SUV.  The hybrid burns one gallon—saving 1 gallon vs. the car. Clearly, if you have the option of upgrading an SUV to an ordinary car, or upgrading a car to a hybrid, the former is the better choice:  it saves twice as much gas. 

In fact, if you do the math—and from an emissions standpoint alone—it’s just as important to switch someone from a 15-mpg car to a 30-mpg car as it is to convince someone with a 30-mpg car to stop driving altogether.  For a 60 mile trip taken (or avoided) it’s still 2 gallons of gas saved.

This, I hope, is clear enough. But all sorts of depressing things follow as consequences of the math.

(more…)

Eating Close to Home

Eat Here, a new book by Worldwatch Institute’s Brian Halweil, takes a close look at a topic that is close to many northwesterners’ hearts and taste buds: the burgeoning local food movement. The book is a bit too data-packed-not quite accessible enough for a general audience-but it does have some gems in it, including a series of case studies of communities, businesses, and consumers around the world who are working together to make their food less traveled and more sustainable.

Among these is a fast-food chain based in Vancouver, Washington, called Burgerville. Burgerville a 40-year-old, 1600-employee business whose menu is reminiscent of McDonald’s, except for one thing: it buys the bulk of its ingredients from farmers in Oregon and Washington—Oregon beef, Tillamook cheddar, Pacific Northwest halibut, and so on-and works with local distributors and wholesalers. Even more unusual: Burgerville’s menu changes with the season.

(more…)

River Repatriation, II

Today, the Eureka Times-Standardreports the lifting of another barrier to the return of Cascadia’s Trinity River to its rightful course.

Opponents of the plan do not intend to pursue legal appeals.

(I summarized the issue last summer here.)

UPDATE: Broken link fixed 1/24. (Thanks to Dano in comments for noting the rupture.)

Money for Nothing

(This post is part of a series.)

Two headlines today, on replacing the crumbling Alaskan Way Viaduct, the aerial highway through downtown Seattle that cuts off the city from its waterfront:

Seattle P-I: Viaduct Funding ‘Impossible’:  Sen. Murray says U.S. won’t put up $1 billion
Seattle Times: Murray Says Viaduct Request is DOA

Now, I’m not one to say “I told you so.”  No, wait.  Actually, I am.

But, more seriously, this is going to put a crimp in the city’s plans for replacing the viaduct with a tunnel.  Which means that the city will have that much more time to consider whether—with all theothertransportationprojects planned or underway in the region—the $4.1 billion tunnel project is really worth the cost.

The Little Engine That Could?

Over the last two days, a question has circulated around our office, asked by green architect and Sightline friend Rob Harrison.  His quandary:  which car should he buy to replace an automobile that was totalled?

He’s narrowed his choices to 4—a super-efficient Toyota Prius, a VW or Subaru station wagon, or a 1992 Honda Accord—and is weighing factors including price, reliability, safety, utility, and environmental performance.

I can’t claim any special expertise on the subject, but I can say this much (and I’m preparing to duck when people start throwing blunt objects at me):  for most city dwellers, buying a new Prius is a fairly expensive way of reducing your environmental impacts.

(more…)