After a string of successes defending the Northwest from ill-conceived dirty energy projects, the thin green line—the Northwest’s opposition movement to coal, oil, and gas exports—is starting to play offense. Local governments around the region are already updating land use laws to protect their communities from the depredations of fossil fuel infrastructure schemes. Now, a … Read more
In the last several years, Cascadia has seen a tsunami of proposals to expand the region’s capacity to ship coal and oil throughout and out of the region. More recently, a third wave of proposals has emerged: fracked petrochemicals, including methanol, which Chinese companies would use to make plastics. But methanol comes at a high … Read more
A wish list of policies to achieve more representative and effective governance.
Alan At this week’s staff meeting, we were discussing the relentless rains this winter in Cascadia and wondering if it was a record (days of rain? Inches of rain? Days without sun? etc.) So the staff decided to do some digging and compiled what we’ve found in this week’s weekend reading. Seattle has had few … Read more
Is climate change concern among US voters growing because of moves by the US Congress and the White House to stymie pollution-cutting solutions—or in spite of them? In any case, Gallup reports this month that Americans are taking global warming more seriously than they have at any time in the past eight years. In March, sixty-four percent … Read more
Most businesses would jump at the opportunity to invest a dollar that saves them $5.85 over the next three years and then keeps on returning savings, all the while improving service to their customers. That’s what the state of Colorado accomplished by upgrading family planning services between 2009 and 2014, and other jurisdictions have reported … Read more
The tsunami of bankruptcies that overwhelmed the US coal industry over the past two years has largely subsided—but it left an unprecedented path of financial wreckage in its wake, wiping out shareholders, decimating balance sheets, and stranding billions of dollars in loans that will never be repaid. There’s been an unexpected upside to this financial chaos, however: an … Read more
Already besieged by explosive oil trains and polluting coal trains, rail-line communities in the Pacific Northwest may soon face a new vexation: mile-long trains hauling liquefied natural gas (LNG). It’s thanks to a little-known experiment taking place in Alaska, under test conditions that bear little resemblance to realities in Cascadia. The first LNG-by-rail shipment For … Read more
In another sign of the collapsing prospects for West Coast coal exports, Cloud Peak Energy—one of the largest coal producers in the American West and the best positioned coal exporter in the vast Powder River Basin—recently announced that it had extricated itself from long-term contracts to move coal into Pacific Rim markets. It was a costly … Read more
