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Get out your propeller beanies, folks. I’m going into full-on geek mode. On Monday I mentioned that—despite my family’s best efforts to cut back on our CO2 emissions by reducing how much we fly—the world has conspired to defeat us. Sure, we’re flying less, but the rest of our extended family is flying more as a consequence. One commentor asked if I shouldn’t forget all the personal sacrifice fol-de-rol, and...

Editor’s note: Winona LaDuke will speak at Seattle University on February 28th, 2013. Sightline can’t wait to hear her again! Tickets went on sale today, January 16th, at noon. Event details are on Facebook, and tickets are available through Brown Paper Tickets. Below is Sightline’s mid-2006 interview of LaDuke. In the six years since she left the limelight of Presidential politics, LaDuke has been campaigning for renewable energy, especially on...

Americans, like most people in the industrialized world, are getting heavier. That much is clear. But the reasons why our waistlines are expanding so fast are still a bit murky. Sure, there is a simple explanation: we eat too much, and don’t get enough exercise. But that explanation doesn’t really get at the heart of the matter. It’s not as if we all sat down one day and decided to...

Maybe the old adage should be changed to: “a rising tide swamps most boats.” That’s the topic of Paul Krugman’s NY Timescolumn today, in which he characterizes income trends from 2004 (the most recent year for which data is available). The column is behind the pay-wall, but I’ll include a few choice excerpts here: The U.S. economy grew 4.2 percent, a very good number. And yet… the purchasing power of...

“There are two key ways to reduce abortion—by making it less necessary or by making it less available,” as Jessica Arons and Shira Saperstein write for the Center for American Progress. The former means preventing unwanted pregnancies, by reducing sexual abuse, domestic violence and rape; by enabling couples to make better choices through, for example, comprehensive sexuality education in schools (and, above all, better educational and economic opportunities in general);...

(Editor’s note: Seth Zuckerman is a former publisher of Tidepool, and a longtime Northwest writer.) What does it take to go beyond intention and scientific analysis to actually repair the damage that has been done to Cascadia’s natural systems? A new DVD attempts to answer one small part of that question as it pertains to salmon. Our species has made numerous unthinking gestures toward Cascadia’s flagship fish, but one of...

When I was in fifth grade, I walked a half-mile to school every day. Because I was in my bookworm phase, I managed to perfect the art of walking and reading at the same time, only occasionally tripping over the sidewalk. The Bellingham Heraldreported yesterday that there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be allowed such freedom today: Children who walk or bike to school are an endangered species. Cari McMullin,...

Today’s Seattle Timesand Post-Intelligencerlead with news that a regulatory board is moving to allow Washington pharmacists to decline to fill prescriptions for reasons of conscience. The prescriptions in dispute are for the emergency contraceptive Plan B. And the reason a few pharmacists don’t want to fill the prescriptions is because they consider Plan B abortion. There’s cynical manipulation at work here plus a monumental failure of logic. The cynical manipulation...

Just in time to enjoy the arrival of their Copper River brethren–flown in today on ice from Alaska for upscale diners—the Columbia River Chinook have finally arrived in numbers. Just two weeks ago the spring run was so weak that officials worried it could represent one of the smallest runs on record. Now, the spring run appears so robust that it’s exceeding even the original (pre-worry) estimates. The run is...

From Scientific American comes this story (only part of which is free, unfortunately) on mixtures of chemical contaminants. Apparently, some compounds that are considered “safe” at low levels—or at least, not toxic enough for their effects to be obvious—can still be harmful when mixed with other “safe” contaminants. The article discusses one study of the effects of low-level pesticide contamination on tadpoles: Individually, the chemicals had little effect on developing...