British Columbia Archives | Page 40 of 43

Carbon Dioxide: The Evil Ninja

August 24, 2011 by SwatchJunkies

To explain ocean acidification to second graders, here’s a start: Think of carbon dioxide as an evil ninja.

He’s buried in the ground in the form of coal, oil or some other fossil fuel. Someone digs him up and lights him on fire, sending him up into the atmosphere in a plume of smoke, or perhaps a polluting helicopter. The stealthy ninja parachutes out and lands in the ocean, where he begins to turn the ocean more acidic.

The ninja also runs into a happy clam, whose shell is made of calcium and carbonate. But the evil ninja breaks the molecule apart, kidnaps the carbonate and locks it away where no one can get to it. With that fundamental bond broken, the shell dissolves, the clam inside dies, and sea life as we know it is under attack.

That, at least, is the way students from the Suquamish Tribe Middle School see the situation unfolding in our oceans, as they brainstorm ideas for an animated video that will help younger kids understand the mechanics of ocean acidification. It’s a problem that people like Paul Williams, the shellfish management policy advisor for the tribe, sees as a grave threat to their culture. As he explained to a room of 11- to 14-year-old students on a recent summer day:

The goal today is to make videos to explain what’s going on out on the water because this is your future. If any of you want to be fishermen or fisherwomen, it’s really up to you guys. This is something that’s happening right now and it’s getting worse. If we want to have any alternative to McDonald’s, we’re going to have to work on this. And I have to apologize to you because my generation couldn’t do it. It’s a shame to have to tell you guys that this is your problem…but it’s the truth and I think you guys are old enough to be told the truth.

Unchain Bike Sharing

August 18, 2011 by SwatchJunkies

Imagine for a moment that cities around the world are rolling out fleets of magic carpets and that those carpets are having truly wizardly effects: improved public health and safety, reduced traffic congestion and carbon emissions, and reduced dependence on foreign oil. City dwellers can check them out or drop them off at stations everywhere, and they are free to use for up to 30 minutes. After that, they cost something, but not much. Picture literally millions of citizens using these carpets for short, speedy trips all over town. Now imagine being in the Northwest and watching this opportunity fly by because fanatical carpet helmet laws discourage would-be riders.

This is exactly what’s happening. The magic’s not in carpets, though: it’s in the humble bicycle.

Pavement to Parklets

August 16, 2011 by SwatchJunkies

Courtesy of Streetfilms, here’s a video on the trend of converting pavement (parking spaces, awkward roadways, etc.) into little parks (h/t to Matt Lerner).

It’s a great idea—one that many cities are catching on to. The benefits are numerous: better street life, additional space for businesses, more green space to filter stormwater, and they’re just plain fun. (Back in March, the New York Times catalogs some of the downsides.)

BC Data Maps

August 16, 2011 by SwatchJunkies

Sightline boardmember and Vancouver urbanite Gordon Price pointed out some great data visualizations coming out of BC on his blog. There’s a whole series of maps looking at how Vancouver residents get to work. For instance, 40 percent of West End residents walk to work:

Freeing Taxis, Addendum

August 11, 2011 by SwatchJunkies

Last week’s article on the way taxis are regulated in the Pacific Northwest has generated a lot of attention and raised a lot of questions. (We’ve seen some conversations on Reddit feeds for Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver; been on the front page of 24 Hours Vancouver; and been heard on several radio and TV stations.) It’s a complex issue, and I’d like to revisit a few points that could have been covered in a longer article.

Many observers focused on the price differences, pointing out that the correlation between cab availability and price is not direct. That’s right. It’s not a one-to-one relationship.

Food Labels Of The Future

August 11, 2011 by SwatchJunkies

Do visual symbols of nutrition help us eat healthier? With the USDA recently replacing the confusing and unhelpful food pyramid with a more streamlined plate logo, it’s clear that the way we represent food matters. The food plate’s simple depiction of what a healthy diet looks like has the potential to be extremely effective—it allows people to rate their plate against a healthy standard at a glance.

An effective food icon could have a huge impact on the food choices we make, in-store and at home. So why not piggyback on the release of the food plate with a redesign of our food labels?

Current nutrition labels are a labyrinth of dietary information that most consumers don’t have time to decipher. The FDA has been working, slowly, on an overhaul of the food labeling system since 2005, and since 2010 has toyed with restrictions for front-of-package claims, which are notoriously misleading and have been blamed for contributing to rising obesity levels.

Washington Carbon Tax: New Model and Analysis

August 10, 2011 by SwatchJunkies

Sightline is very pleased to be hosting a new analytical paper and model, “Washington State Carbon Tax: Fiscal and Environmental Impacts” by Keibun Mori, a recent graduate of the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Affairs. He created the Carbon Tax Analysis Model (C-TAM), for the Washington State Department of Commerce.

It’s an impressive piece of work on several levels. Mori’s analysis, which centers on a British Columbia-style carbon tax, is almost certainly the most comprehensive published treatment of a state-level carbon tax in Washington, and maybe anywhere. Even better, his spreadsheet-based C-TAM model manages to be open-source and comprehensible, but still allow for a remarkable degree of complexity and user input. Mori includes a terrifically thorough treatment of fuel prices and demand elasticity (which is a subject of much debate and confusion in climate geek circles). The result is a solid look at the economic effects and environmental benefits of a state carbon tax in Washington.

Freeing Taxis

August 5, 2011 by SwatchJunkies

Update 8/11: I have an addendum to this post published here. Also, the chart was altered to reflect a slightly higher number for Vancouver.

What if the Northwest’s cities legally capped the number of pizza delivery cars? What if, despite growing urban population and disposable incomes, our Pizza Delivery Oversight Boards had scarcely issued new delivery licenses since 1975? Pizza delivery would be expensive and slow; citizens would rise up in revolt.

Substitute “taxicab” for “pizza delivery” and you have a reasonable facsimile of the taxi industry in Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, BC: tightly restricted taxi numbers, high fares, and low availability.

Plentiful, affordable taxis facilitate greener urban travel. They help families shed second cars, ride transit more often, and walk to work on could-be-rainy days. They fill gaps in transit systems and provide a fallback in case of unexpected events.

Coal Exports From Canada

August 4, 2011 by SwatchJunkies

Sightline is publishing a new research memo today that documents the facts about Canada’s coal exporting capacity. The memo finds that ports in British Columbia do not have sufficient capacity to handle the volumes of coal planned for Washington ports.

The state coal lobby claims that US coal exports will simply shift to BC if Washington doesn’t build its own export facilities. Yet the numbers tell a different story. The truth is that even if BC’s coal ports were to devote all of their planned capacity expansions to shipping solely US coal, they could still handle only a small fraction of the coal planned for Cherry Point and Longview.

Getting Smart on Sewage

August 4, 2011 by SwatchJunkies

A rainstorm—a real gully washer—hits the Northwest. In numerous cities with antiquated public plumbing, the rain seeps into cracked sewage lines and flows into stormwater drains that link to the sewer system. From Port Angeles to Seattle to Spokane, treatment plants are overwhelmed by the deluge, causing raw sewage to spill into Port Angeles Harbor, Puget Sound, and the Spokane River. The sewage carries bacteria, viruses, and other pollutants that pose a risk to beach goers hunting clams or swimmers taking a dip.

Spewing sewage into waterways is potentially dangerous to people, and just plain gross. So Seattle and King County alone are preparing to spend $1.3 billion on projects to fix the problem. The navy town of Bremerton on Puget Sound’s west shore recently finished a project costing more than $50 million to staunch the annual flow of hundreds of millions of gallons of sewage-tainted waste. Outside of the state, Vancouver, BC, is working to separate its sewage system and Portland this year is scheduled to complete its $1.4 billion Big Pipe projects to control sewage spills.

But there’s increasing concern that the regulations driving these costly fixes are based on an arbitrary benchmark. A recent article that I wrote for Crosscut and last Sunday’s piece by Lynda Mapes at the Seattle Times both called into question the sewage rule and the priority being placed on shrinking the number of combined-sewer overflows (CSOs) at a time when the region faces arguably more urgent water-quality challenges.

Washington’s leaders need to reconsider a rule that limits the number of sewage overflows to an average of one per outfall. Instead, they need to craft rules grounded in the actual harm being caused by the spill by considering how much and what kind of pollution is being dumped. By focusing the regulation on the environmental and human health effects, cities, counties, and utility rate payers will be able to direct their time and money to projects that will have the greatest benefits to the region. Reshaping the CSO rules could save money by shifting restoration dollars to projects that pay the largest dividends.

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Region: British Columbia