This week brings two cautionary tales about overstressed systems. Puget Sound’s Hood Canal, which has long suffered from low oxygen levels whose effects on marine life are exacerbated by the Canal’s deep, narrow shape, is reporting the lowest oxygen levels on record for this time of the year. Some predict a fish kill along the lines of last fall’s. The main culprit is probably excess nitrogen from sources such as septic systems, stormwater runoff, manure and fertilizers: Up to 300 tons of pollutants are being released into the canal each year, says Puget Sound Action Team. (In 2000, Washington’s coast was spotlighted by NAS as a problem area for nitrogen-related algae blooms.)
Further south, the BPA may reduce its salmon-saving spills over Columbia River dams by 39 percent this summer, largely to save money. It’s a more moderate proposal than one aired earlier and BPA promises expanded salmon conservation efforts. But it’s not a move likely to enhance the long-term prospects for biological diversity and healthy aquatic ecosystems in Cascadia’s greatest watershed.
Sooner or later, as climate systems, economies, and biology get stretched, you get moments like these: the state desperately seeking ways to protect Hood Canal from imminent fish kills; BPA sacrificing salmon to help pay its debt. In both cases, the situation has long since reached the point where low-cost, high-leverage solutions are at hand. The moral of these cautionary tales is not to stretch systems so far.
As noted two days ago, California’s draft vehicle climate-emission standards are a big chance for Northwest leadership.
Today’s New York Times spells out the implications further. Other, East-Coast states are already joining with California. Let’s get on the bandwagon, too!
Former governor John Kitzhaber has waded into the fray surrounding logging in Oregon’s Tillamook and Clatsop State Forests. According to an article in the Oregonian, Kitzhaber is trying to forestall the greens-versus-industry “see-saw approach that has put our forests at risk” by proposing compromise solutions.
One compromise with demonstrated success is the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) label. FSC labeling would mean continued logging, but with ecologically sensitive management that protects old growth and riparian areas. This summer, state foresters are re-writing their management guidelines for the 100,000-acre Elliott State Forest in southern Oregon. It’s an ideal time for Oregon to pursue FSC certification on a limited scale-in the Elliott-as a first step toward certifying all of the state’s working forests. More on that here.
California’s much-anticipated plan for slashing climate pollution from new cars and trucks is previewed in today’s New York Times.
The announcement opens a juicy opportunity for the Northwest states and BC, as I’ll explain in a moment.
First, though, the numbers in the draft plan: a 30 percent greenhouse gas emission reduction among new cars, phased in between 2009 and 2030. Because vehicles remain in the fleet for about 15 years, on average, it will take until 2045 before the full effects are felt.
Second, some perspective: That’s a pretty bold step compared with the federal government, but it’s paltry compared with the atmospheric need. By 2045 or thereabouts-a time as close to us as the year 1963-the snowpack in the Washington and Oregon Cascades will likely be cut in half by climate change, according to the UW Climate Impacts Group. In fact, much of the Oregon range will be snowless.
The nonprofit fiscal watchdog Green Capitol has posted its annual recommendations for greening California’s state budget. As usual, it’s a model of sound economics in service of sustainability. It identifies ten concrete steps—ranging from revisions in who pays for certain forest-fire fighting services to how fish and game fees are collected—for safeguarding both the environment and Golden State taxpayers.
Here’s the crux paragraph:
Leading environmental groups, in consultation with a variety of experts have identified 10 proposals that
would help reform and improve the way environmental programs are funded, eliminate wasteful subsidies
and tax breaks, and provide disincentives for businesses and individuals to pollute. When put together, Green Watchdog proposals would save hundreds of millions of dollars a year in General Fund revenue, generate hundreds of millions in additional funding for air and water quality programs, and save taxpayers hundreds of millions more by eliminating environmentally harmful tax policies.
As often in such matters, the details get technical (read: boring, unless you’re a geek like me) pretty quickly. Tax codes, land-use plans, fee schedules, rate structures, impact statements, insurance rules, regulatory frameworks, strategic plans-most of the scaffolding on which our world is built is rather tedious. But the implications are enormous (see Sightline’s catalog of small-but-high-leverage changes for more examples). And Green Capitol’s report does a better job than many at leavening the material and spelling out its importance.
Today’s New York Times summarizes the latest battery of safety tests on passenger vehicles. As before, SUVs fare poorly:
“Generally speaking, S.U.V.’s and pickup trucks have higher fatality rates for their occupants than passenger cars, and substantially higher death rates than minivans.”
One of our greatest disappointments in developing the Cascadia Scorecard was our inability to include a measurement of northwesterners’ own sense of satisfaction with their lives and communities. The cost of gathering such data, and the technical challenges of reliable measurement, proved prohibitive. Someday!
But in recent years, academic research on happiness has exploded, bringing the day closer when it’ll be possible to track Cascadia’s happiness quotient. The implications of doing so would be profound, even revolutionary, according to a group of leading researchers who spoke recently at a Brookings Institution panel in Washington, DC. (Short summary here; full proceedings and papers available here.)
In essence, they argue, as a society, we’ve been scratching in the wrong place. We’ve been trying to maximize GNP instead of gross national happiness.
A few highlights, to entice you into reading further:
Americans’ inflation-adjusted income is three times that of their grandparents, yet Americans are no more satisfied with their lives now. In fact, young people suffer more stress and depression.
British Columbia may be in for another summer of forest fires. Similarly, forests in the western United States also appear headed for another season of fires, the fruit of an ongoing drought. Fire, which is often beneficial to the forest ecosystem, can give rise to extensive salvage logging, which isn’t.
Officials in the province point out that people are responsible for 292 of the 323 fires that BC has already experienced this year. But people may be responsible in a less obvious way too. Climate scientists, like those at the US Environmental Protection Agency, have long worried that global warming may increase the risk of forest fires in certain places.
