In a surprise Sunday afternoon announcement, the company backing a huge oil pipeline proposal in British Columbia cried uncle. Citing conflicts between the Canadian government, which supports the project, and British Columbia (plus other local governments), which vehemently oppose it, Kinder Morgan said it would stop spending any money to advance the project. Or at … Read more
Coverage of natural gas, even in the most serious mainstream press, too often reads like it’s lifted from the fossil fuel industry playbook. “Natural gas burns cleaner than coal or oil.” You’ve heard this so many times that it honestly just seems, well, natural. The point is, an industry with profit on the line has … Read more
Editor’s note: Late last month, the necessity defense appeared to have reached a milestone when a judge in Massachusetts found 13 pipeline protesters not guilty after they testified that civil disobedience was the only reasonable alternative to prevent imminent harm, locally and globally. The 13 activists were arrested, along with close to 200 other participants, in … Read more
“This is more fun than I’ve ever had in my life.” That’s how activist Don Steinke summed up his tireless work opposing a giant oil train terminal on the Columbia River to reporters. His enthusiasm has been contagious: communities all around the Northwest have been chalking up big wins against big oil. Stopping oil trains … Read more
This is part three in a four article series about how voters respond to ranked ballots and proportional voting systems. You can read the other articles in this series here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 4. This article was also updated and revised from an earlier version for clarity. Would switching from a familiar … Read more
Exciting democracy changes are afoot in Cascadia. This year the Washington state legislature passed a suite of bills affirming its citizens’ right to vote. Benton County, Oregon, is about to become the first Cascadian jurisdiction in nearly a decade to use ranked-choice voting. And British Columbians will decide this year whether to make their elections … Read more
Last month, senior research associate Margaret Morales was a guest on “Democracy Speaks!” to discuss democracy reform with host Cindy Black. Margaret provided an overview of the work Sightline is doing in the democracy realm (campaign finance, access to voting rights, and reforming voting systems) before focusing on proportional representation. Listen to the hour-long interview in its entirety … Read more
[content_box type=”border” button='{“url”:”https://www.sightline.org/2018/02/27/video-autonomous-electric-vehicles-and-their-future-in-cascadia/”,”title”:”Watch video”}’]Watch Daniel Malarkey’s appearance on Q13’s newscast in which he discusses the future of autonomous electric vehicles.[/content_box] Climate hawks know the best way to decarbonize our economy is to electrify everything, fast. But we’ve made little progress electrifying transportation, the source of over half of the carbon emissions in Oregon and Washington. … Read more
Sightline fellow Daniel Malarkey has already made the case for why Cascadia could thrive by embracing fleets of autonomous electric vehicles, as well as spelling out the downsides of such fleets and how to avoid them. Last week, Daniel was interviewed on Q13’s newscast about the future of self-driving cars in the Seattle area. You can … Read more
