Donate Newsletters

Region: Oregon

10 Key Takeaways from BC’s Polluters-Pay Model

by

British Columbia has a world-class carbon tax. It’s been working for almost seven years, cutting pollution and pumping money into other parts of the economy, like the pockets of businesses and households who now pay lower taxes. Jealous decision-makers down here in Oregon and Washington might be asking “Yes, but how how did they start taxing pollution and helping businesses and residents? How did they do it?” Clean Energy Canada set out to answer your anguished questions by interviewing 13 of the architects of British Columbia’s carbon tax. Below are their 10 takeaways about a carbon tax, along with a little explanation and my take.

1. A carbon tax and a thriving economy can co-exist.

[prettyquote align = “right”]“The numbers speak for themselves. In the last five or six years, B.C. has outgrown most of the rest of Canada, and has had significantly less emissions than the rest of Canada.” —Ross Beaty, Executive Chairman, Alterra Power[/prettyquote]

True, that.

Every single interviewee agreed that the carbon tax has not harmed the economy. Some interviewees noted that carbon-funded corporate tax cuts have helped attract businesses to the province.

Hear that, Oregon and Washington? Making prices tell the truth about the cost of pollution is at worst neutral for the economy and at best good for business.

Read more

Advice on Rain Barrel Watering Now As a Pamphlet!

by
Rain garden

Thanks to all of the interest in our post “A Green Light for Using Rain Barrel Water on Garden Edibles” we’ve created a user-friendly pamphlet summarizing the research on rain barrel safety. This colorful, one-page brochure hits the high points of the international studies on rain barrel water quality, citing research from Washington, New Jersey, and … Read more

VIDEO: The Pacific Northwest Can End the Free Lunch for Carbon Polluters

by

Have you ever tried to briefly explain to someone why we need to hold carbon polluters accountable? Here’s a 60-second explanation. This is the first in a series of short videos about how the Pacific Northwest can use a carbon price to protect our communities and accelerate our transition to clean energy.

Key takeaways:

  • The biggest polluters are getting a free lunch. Oil and coal companies profit while they pollute our atmosphere for free.
  • Our families and communities are picking up their tab. In the Pacific Northwest, we are seeing more kids with asthma, damages to the shellfish industry, dwindling water supplies, and record wildfires.
  • We can fix this by making polluters pay for their pollution.

Columbia River Ship Traffic: the Impact of Coal and Oil Plans

by

Like the Salish Sea, the Columbia River is threatened by the risks of oil spills. If you need proof of the risk, look no further than the historical record of major spills or the dozens of recent close calls on the river. In fact, the Coast Guard sector responsible for the region that includes Grays Harbor plus the Columbia and Snake Rivers responds to 275 oil pollution incidents in a typical year.

Yet the risk of spills could soon increase dramatically. If they are built, new fossil fuel shipment proposals would result in huge increases to both oil and other petroleum ship movements, as well as to overall large vessel traffic on the Columbia River.

Using the Washington Department of Ecology’s “Vessel Transit and Entry Counts” database, we calculate the average volume of ship and barge traffic over the last decade and compared that to the number of vessel trips that would be induced by newly built and planned fossil fuel sites in the region.

The result? We find that new crude oil and petroleum product facilities could triple the number of tank vessels—tanker ships and tank barges—crossing the Columbia River’s notoriously dangerous bar.

Read more

Portland’s Vision Zero Plan

by

Last week, I outlined some of the key principles of Vision Zero—an approach to designing streets that prioritizes safety and human life above other considerations. Today, the city of Portland rolled out its Vision Zero commitments, including an ambitious goal of working toward zero traffic deaths and serious injuries within the next decade.

Read more

Sightline Seeks to Daylight Secret Exemptions to Crude Oil Export Ban

by
What I see, by Asher Isbrucker, cc
What I See by Asher Isbrucker used under CC BY 2.0

For nearly four decades, the US federal government has maintained a “ban” on exporting domestic crude oil supplies. It’s been a cornerstone of the national energy landscape since President Ford signed the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act into law in pursuit of that perpetual goal of American politicians, energy independence.

Although the legal framework includes a number of exceptions—allowing exports of North Slope Alaskan and heavy California crude, as well as exports to Canada, among other loopholes—big oil companies have had the ban in their crosshairs for years. Now, in the midst of a production boom (despite moderate domestic demand), the industry has launched a lobbying assault on federal officials in the hopes of further boosting the payoff for large-scale fracking and drilling. And their efforts appear to be paying off.

Read more

What is Vision Zero?

by

When you ask people to estimate how many people are killed on American roads each year, the answers vary widely: 1 million? 500,000? 40,000? 2,000?

As the video below shows, when you ask them what Washington state’s traffic death goal should be, most people have no idea. They offer tentative guesses, ranging from fewer than 100 to 5,000. (For context, there are actually about 33,000 annual US traffic deaths now, and 437 people lost their lives on Washington roads in 2013.)

But watch the video until minute 2:22, when the interviewers ask people what the traffic death goal for their family should be. Everyone knows immediately: Zero. Zero. Zero. None. Absolutely zero. Zero, of course. I would want zero. (Except for the funny guy: “A couple of them I’d like to run over if that would help your numbers any.”)

When the same people are asked again what the state’s traffic death goal should be, everyone smiles. Now they have an answer they believe in: Zero. That should be the goal for everyone.

That’s the driving principle behind Vision Zero, a movement that started in Sweden in 1997. More recently, it’s spread to US cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and even Los Angeles. Both Portland and Seattle plan to roll out local Vision Zero plans too. So it’s worth examining what Vision Zero is—and what it is not.

Read more

Coal Export Markets in Freefall

by

For more than two years, the US coal industry has predicted that international coal prices would soon rebound, breathing new life into coal export and mining proposals that are now languishing on financial life support. But despite the industry’s hopes, the bottom keeps falling out of the global coal market.

Market conditions for Pacific Rim coal exporters are now worse than they’ve been since the depths of the global recession. After peaking in early 2011 at more than $130 per ton, the price of benchmark Australian coal has fallen for nearly 4 consecutive years. In December, they reached a 5-year low of $62 in December, according to the World Bank.

But the futures market predicts that the worst is yet to come. The futures price for December delivery of Australian coal has fallen to $57 per ton, with the price collapse accelerating in recent months.

Cascadia’s Car-Sharing Super Bowl

by

You’ve probably heard that Seattle’s about to launch into a heated contest—one that pits city against city vying for honor, bragging rights, and civic pride.

We refer, of course, to the Car-Sharing Super Bowl!

OK, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch. Still, on just about every playing field there’s a hint of healthy competition among the Pacific Northwest’s three biggest cities—Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland. Car-sharing should be no exception: cities ought to be vying to see which one offers the best car-sharing services. And with these services expanding rapidly throughout the Pacific Northwest (and beyond), we thought it would make sense to see how the Cascadia’s Big 3 stack up.

As it turns out, the contest wasn’t as close as we thought it would be: Vancouver, BC wins the Northwest Car-Sharing Super Bowl hands down. Let’s go to the highlights:

Read more

Why New Improved Oil Trains Are Not Nearly Good Enough

by

Last February to much fanfare, the oil company Tesoro—a firm with big plans for oil trains in the Northwest—announced that it would voluntarily replace older tank cars with newer models.  In the technical parlance of the rail industry, the firm meant that they would upgrade or replace the legacy DOT-111 tank cars to be compliant with the CPC-1232 standard.

The idea sounded promising at first blush, but a closer inspection reveals that Tesoro’s move was more about posturing than public safety. The upgraded standards the company is trumpeting are far from safe enough—a reality that was shortly made clear by a massive oil train fire in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia involving these same tank cars just two months after Tesoro’s announcement. As the flaming oil wreckage in the James River demonstrated, Tesoro’s proposal was little more than a cheapskate’s way of continuing business as usual despite powerful evidence that much more is needed.

To see why the standard favored by Tesoro isn’t good enough, here’s a look at the details.

Read more

+ More
×