Special Series
Seattle's Great Viaduct Debate
In a Series
A Dissertation on the Viaduct
Seattle's viaduct replacement debate has generated an untold volume of analysis, opinion, and argument. It's also generated at least one PhD dissertation.
Kevin Ramsey, a geography student at the University of Washington, takes a look at the way that concerns about climate change have been deployed in the debate over the replacement. (Abstract; summary; full text.) I'll confess that I haven't made my way through the entire 250 pages, but it strikes me as providing some fascinating analysis of the politics:
...agency planners incorporated concerns about climate change through an extension of their own established logics of transportation planning rather than through a fundamental reconsideration of Seattle’s automobile-centric transportation system.
More surprisingly, I found that stakeholders themselves helped make this happen. They did so by supporting (and even advocating) the use of travel demand models to predict the quantity of future greenhouse gas emissions from alternative viaduct replacement scenarios. Isolating the consideration of climate change to this single evaluation measure essentially enabled the issue to be treated as an afterthought in the planning process, rather than a motivator for reformulating the planning process altogether. It also ensured that the calculation of future greenhouse gas emissions was subject to the same kinds of assumptions regarding demand for automobile travel that activists had already contested for years. These assumptions were reflected in the agencies’ findings: all proposed viaduct replacement scenarios (including three that do not include a highway) were predicted to increase greenhouse gas emissions in the Seattle region to 14-15% above current levels by the year 2015.
The upshot, according to Ramsey, is that highway planners were able to essentially co-opt concerns about climate emissions into a business-as-usual approach to road building. The antidote, he says, is for advocates to level more fundamental challenges to the large systems that provide for automobile-dominated infrastructure.
British Columbia Doesn't Want To Get PAYD
Over at The Tyee this morning, you'll find an editorial piece from me and Alan arguing that British Columbia should finally get around to adopting Pay-As-You-Drive car insurance. Maybe it sounds like a small thing, but it's a policy with a lot of leverage.
To wit:
Car insurance in British Columbia is like an all-you-can eat buffet: once you've made the purchase, you may as well gorge. Mileage is correlated with risk; the more you drive, the more likely you'll crash. But unlike a driver's age and safety record, insurers have historically underweighted mileage in their rating formulas...
Essentially, pay-as-you-drive makes buying car insurance like buying gasoline: drive less, buy less.
You Say You Want A Constitution
President Obama and leaders at all levels of government have been vocal about the role energy efficiencies can play in economic recovery, creating green jobs and reducing climate-changing emissions. But encouragement from the top to develop innovative financing for energy efficiency is running smack into constitutional reality in Washington, where state constitutional limits might hinder innovative financing. The state’s constitution (written in the century before last, 120 years ago) needs to be amended to make creative financing for energy efficiencies easier.
And a recent Gallup poll confirms that Americans are most concerned about money when they consider retrofitting their homes to make them more energy efficient by doing things like adding insulation, replacing water heaters and installing fixtures that use less energy. More and more people are beginning to consider these kinds of retrofits just as important as new countertops when they make home improvements. Making it simple and cheap to finance these improvements—and the jobs that go with them—should be an easy sell.
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Naughty or Nice? Wrong Question!
Here's a story that caused a bit of buzz in the office earlier in the week. Apparently, researchers in Toronto found that university students who bought "green" products in controlled tests were less generous with strangers, and more likely to tell a fib. The researchers suggest that this is an example of "licensing": when people act virtuously in one domain, they feel entitled to shirk in another.
Or, to put it in holiday terms: sometimes, when we're extra nice, we feel like it's OK to be a little bit naughty. (Santa won't mind, right?)
To me, this research hints at the limits of green consumerism. I'm certainly not suggesting that there's something wrong with being "nice" -- buying organic, say, or recycling. Those are good things! Yet I'm Scrooge-ishly skeptical that simply offering people a handful of "virtuous" options, among a sea of less-virtuous ones, will do much to advance the cause of sustainability.
The Last Reindeer in America
Most people don't know it, but the Northwest is home to the last wild reindeer still living in the Lower 48 states. To be sure, there aren't many of them -- a few dozen at most -- but they are here.
No kidding. Northern Idaho and northeastern Washington are home, at least occasionally, to a small band of woodland caribou that split their time in British Columbia. They are considered the same species (but a different subspecies) as the reindeer that populate northern Europe and Christmastime lore.
If you're in the mood for some holiday reindeer reading, I give you a good article by Jim Yuskavitch in Forest Magazine:
The Selkirk Mountains caribou are the last holdouts of America’s native caribou population, which before 1900 were found in northern New England, the Great Lakes area of the upper Midwest, northeast Washington, northwest Montana and Idaho, ranging as far south as the Salmon River...
Historically, mountain caribou occupied the forests and mountains of southwest British Columbia from the Alberta border through the Okanagan highlands, and from northeast of Prince George, south into northeast Washington and northern Idaho down into central Montana. Today, they have vanished from more than half of their original range. They number about 1,900 animals in thirteen populations that are made up of anywhere from a dozen to 400 or 500 animals. Mountain caribou disappeared from Montana by 2002, but they still hang on in Idaho and Washington.
And if you're feeling conservation-minded this season, you should go check out the caribou webpages at Conservation Northwest (and here too) as well as the Mountain Caribou Project. Also, Sightline's Cascadia Scorecard wildlife indicator. Or if it's reindeer maps you want then check out Sightline's continental-scale map of caribou habitat; and the Mountain Caribou Project's detailed terrain map.
It would be nice, I think, to look forward to future Christmases with reindeer south of the Canadian border.
Finally, if you want some Yuletide cocktail conversation, maybe you should read up on the differences between North American caribou and true reindeer, which you can find at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks website. And then someone should tell me why reindeer were widely domesticated in the Eurasian Arctic but not in North America? I've never understood why this would be.
Photo: Ministry of Forests and Range, Province of British Columbia. Also, I admit to taking some poetic license with this post. The word "reindeer" technically refers to the rangifer tarandus tarandus subspecies, while the mountain caribou of the Selkirks (sometimes called woodland caribou) are of the rangifer tarandus caribou suspecies. Whatever.
Dogs vs. SUVs -- The Myth that Won't Die
We wrote a while back about a claim that was circulating around the interwebs: that a German Shepherd (or other good-sized dog) has a bigger impact on the climate than an SUV. When I first heard it, I wasn't sure what to think -- it seemed implausible, but that didn't mean that it wasn't true.
So looked into the numbers -- and even though I'm certain that the New Zealand-based architects who make it are sincere and well-meaning, their claim is simply false. As I describe in mind-numbing detail, the authors underestimate the impacts of an SUV by a factor of 3, give or take; and overestimate the impact of dog food by...well, I'm not sure exactly how much, but it's a whole heckuva lot, and probably a factor of somewhere between 6 and 30.
(The nutshell explanation: they assume that an SUV is driven less than half as much as is typical in the US; they seem to ignore the upstream impacts of gasoline extraction and refining; and they assume that the "meat" in dog food is rib-eye or hamburger, rather than spleens, bones and blood. Maybe Kiwis feed their dogs better, and drive less, than we do in North America -- but in our part of the world, Rover has a smaller carbon pawprint than a Land Rover.)
And yet, despite being completely false, the "dogs are worse than SUVs" meme has legs. It made it into January's Harper's Index (it'll cost you some dough to read the Jan 2010 issue). On Monday I did an interview debunking the claim on KGO Radio in San Francisco. It turned up recently in the Vancouver Sun, and then spread to internet meme factory Fark.com -- with a lively discussion in the comment section. And I just found it on ABC's website, too. I'm sure it's all over the place, but I'm too depressed to look.
I'm not surprised to see this myth so quickly: it's just the sort of weird thing that might be true, and it's certainly counter-intuitive enough to be memorable. But a good story isn't the same thing as a true story; and the reporters who are covering this claim as if it were fact ought to do a simple Google search before they publish. Otherwise, they risk spreading the myth faster than it can be debunked. And if the public debate is poisoned with bad information, some people are bound to make a choice that conflicts with their values; and a few others could turn off to the issues entirely.
So to all folks reading this, do me a favor: help me kill this thing. If you hear someone repeating this urban legend, tell them they're wrong, and why. If you see it or hear it in the news, let me know. And feel free to link to this post, or better yet, the original.
Thanks, and Happy Holidays!
Special Series
Seattle's Great Viaduct Debate
In a Series
Wishful Thinking About Tunnel Costs
Cascadia Center's Bruce Agnew on KUOW last week:
...there was no real media comparison to the tunnels completed here in Seattle, like the recently-completed Sound Transit Beacon Hill light rail tunnel, which came in on time and on budget.
The Beacon Hill tunnel on budget? Not by a long shot.
Here's what really happened. When the tunnel project went out to bid, Sound Transit’s engineers estimated that the project would cost $238.6 million. (Seattle Times coverage here; Seattle P-I coverage here). But Obayashi Corporation won the contract with a low bid of $280 million, a 17 percent increase. During construction, the project’s costs subsequently escalated the contract to $309 million for a total cost overrun of 30 percent. (Source: Sound Transit, “Progress Report: Link Light Rail,” August 2009, p. 17, not available online.) A subsequent Sound Transit progress report, for October 2009, shows the contract costs escalating further, to $311 million.
So, in the end, the final bill for the tunnel wound up being 30 percent more than Sound Transit projected when it sent the project out for bidding.
This isn’t a question of nuance or interpretation. It’s a matter of facts on the public record. The only way that you can say that the tunnel came in “on budget” is by referring to a cost estimate made well after Sound Transit made its estimates – a “budget” that already accounts for the 30 percent cost overruns.
We've Upped Our Standards, Now Up Yours!
Sightline’s research has found that increasing standards for buildings is an important step toward realizing the full benefits of energy efficiency. Including an energy audit along with the home inspection when a home is being sold is a great example of raising standards, which in turn should increase demand for energy audits and retrofits in the residential sector. British Columbia is taking a step toward implementing point-of-sale energy audits with a new voluntary program. It’s one that problem solvers in the region should pay attention to as they consider how to implement this kind of requirement.
The impacts of such a requirement are minimal, and, in the end, they pale when compared to the expense and complexity of the overall transaction of selling or buying a house. Three cities outside our region already have such a requirement: Austin, Texas; San Francisco and Berkeley. California, Washington, D.C., Austin, Texas, and Washington State already require energy use disclosure for commercial buildings.
- Efficiency
- Energy
- Economy
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- Sustainable Living
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- Cascadia
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Special Series
Stormwater Solutions: Curbing Toxic Runoff
In a Series
Put a LID on Stormwater
A stroll down a stretch of 2nd Avenue Northwest in Seattle is practically a walk in the park. The slightly meandering residential street is lined with wide strips of native grasses, small shrubs, and trees. Along the shoulder, interspersed among parking spots, are ponds and swales – gentle depressions – that fill with water during a downpour. What you won’t find are sludgy gutters brimming with muddy water and trash, or deserts of black asphalt stretching from property lines to the roadway.
The street was the city’s first experiment in what it calls “natural drainage systems.” A decade ago, the block was jackhammered up and rebuilt to catch and clean stormwater the way it’s done in a forest: by helping rainstorms soak into the ground, get sucked up by plants, or captured in their branches and leaves where the water evaporates slowly. The project -- called SEA Street -- has been wildly successful, nearly eliminating stormwater runoff even during heavy rains. That's right, runoff on this street was reduced 98 percent during winter rains.
Natural drainage systems are cropping up slowly on streets across Seattle. And other Northwest cities are doing similar projects to curb runoff without pipes and holding tanks. The city of Portland even has an "ecoroof" blog site geared toward innovative stormwater solutions. Vancouver, BC, is building rain gardens at bus stops, among other projects. It’s all part of a movement called “low-impact development” or LID.
For years we’ve known that traditional infrastructure for funneling stormwater away from buildings and roads and into lakes and bays by using pipes and ditches doesn’t work. It fails for people: the systems are regularly overwhelmed, leading to flooded basements and raw sewage pouring into public waterways. It fails for nature: salmon and other species are poisoned by the polluted stormwater and quiet streams are transformed into torrents of filth.
The logic of LID is to try to replicate what Mother Nature does naturally by using engineering tricks and limiting sprawl.
Washington is at a crossroads for low-impact development. The state Department of Ecology, working with a technical advisory committee, is crafting a set of requirements specifying where and how to use LID. The stakes are high. If Ecology comes up with stringent standards that require widespread use of legitimate LID strategies, Puget Sound could reap great benefits. If it doesn't, the fight to save the Sound could be lost due to the steady drumbeat of destruction from stormwater.
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A Teachable Moment
Energy efficiencies, ultimately, are not about buildings but about people. Fixing a building so that it is no longer an energy hog is important, but what happens when people use the building? It is easy to forget that turning up the thermostat, opening windows, or adding more appliances can wipe out hard won energy efficiencies achieved with retrofits. So once the fixes are made, teaching people how to use their buildings to keep energy savings is as important as the retrofits themselves. For local governments these savings can amount to more money in their budgets for critical services at a time of declining revenues.
Washington State University’s Energy Program is using Energy Efficiency Conservation Block Grant funds to address this important aspect of saving energy. The program has created a grant program to support hiring Resource Conservation Managers (RCM)—people focused on teaching people how to use buildings more efficiently—for small cities and county governments. Local governments have until January 15 to apply for up to $75,000 to fund an RCM that would be shared between smaller local governments.
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Special Series
Sustainababy: Born to be Green
In a Series
Let It Snow...Baby Clothes
Editor's Note: Anna finished this post (and a few more) before she went on maternity leave. She gave birth to a healthy girl, Audrey, on December 13.
Exactly one year ago, it snowed in Seattle. Not our usual short-lived dusting, but a real dump that lasted a few solid days and, because we’re not prepared for such events, veritably shut down the city (at least for cars). For Seattle, it was real snow. Some say it was enough snow to shift the outcome of the mayoral race in 2009. And as former Sightliner Elisa Murray noted, it was enough snow to blanket the city in good-heartedness, in a renewed sense of community and sharing. In short, the snow boosted Seattle’s social capital: people were out and about in their neighborhoods, talking to one another and not isolated in their cars; holiday shoppers frequented local retailers rather than anonymous malls; neighbors gave neighbors a helping hand; folks helped each other get to work; great conversations with strangers were struck up as never before. In short, people slowed down, rediscovered their legs and their neighborhoods, and focused on the ultra-local.
I bring this up not only because snow season is upon us once again, but also because another event in my life has practically bowled me over with social capital—the strength of ties to friends, family, and community. Being pregnant and having babies, it turns out, brings out a spirit of community that rivals, or even surpasses, the snow-day phenomenon.
Flame Retardant Coda
Oooh, an early Christmas present! The U.S. EPA has announced that it's saying goodbye to the last brominated flame retardant in the US market. The three manufacturers of deca-BDE have agreed to sunset the compound by 2013.
This is good news. Deca-BDE is in the family of flame retardants known for accumulating in human breast milk. The whole family is fat-soluble, bioaccumulative, and toxic in laboratory studies -- and the compounds found at far greater levels in the US than elsewhere in the developed world. (See here for more on PBDEs in the Northwest.)
Deca, however, was considered both less toxic and less likely to get into human bodies than its chemical cousins, the penta- and octa-BDEs. Still, scientists argued that deca-BDE could break down into lower-brominated congeners, and thus posed a more significant long-term health threat than the bromine industry claimed. Washington passed a pathbreaking partial deca-BDE ban in 2007. It would have been a full ban, except that the industry argued that there was simply no good alternative to deca.
Now, less than three years later, and the chemical industry agrees with the activists: we can get by just fine with other, less troublesome compounds. Good riddance, I say.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/busymonster/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Special Series
Word on the Street
In a Series
Climate Mind Games
Kari Marie Norgaard, a Whitman College sociologist who’s studied public attitudes towards climate science, says we’re in climate denial.
In a Wired Magazine interview, Norgaard puts it this way: “Our response to disturbing information is very complex. We negotiate it. We don’t just take it in and respond in a rational way.” And that means all of us, not just the classic case-climate denier.
So as the scientific consensus over climate change has resolved itself into a resounding “it’s real,” and world leaders consider the aftermath of Copenhagen's summit on how to avoid climate catastrophe, nearly half the US public now thinks that it’s impossible for carbon pollution to warm the Earth. That’s a gain of 20 percent since 2007 and more than at any point in the last 12 years. In short, the disconnect between the public and scientists has never been starker. Here’s how Norgaard explains the disconnect in Wired:
Special Series
Stormwater Solutions: Curbing Toxic Runoff
In a Series
Stormwater's Costly, Stinky Wake-Up Call
You can adopt a puppy from the pound, or even a soldier fighting in Iraq to whom you can send a care package. And in Seattle, you can adopt a storm drain. That's right, you can lay claim to your very own portal to the gutter. The city is so understaffed and over-storm drained that it's asking residents to adopt a drain and remove the leaves and debris that clog it. In return, participants get "free gloves, bags, brooms, rakes and safety vests."
It's probably not such a bad strategy considering what the city is up against. The system built to carry Seattle's rainwater off parking lots and away from homes and businesses is massive: 80,000 storm drains, 40,000 catch basins, and 460 miles of storm drain pipes.
Even smaller Northwest cities are burdened with elaborate stormwater systems. Corvallis, Ore., for example, has 168 miles of stormwater pipes, 8,000 catch basins, and 2,700 manholes.
But all that infrastructure still isn't always enough to do the job.
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Special Series
Sustainababy: Born to be Green
In a Series
The Great Diaper Debate
Editor's Note: Anna finished this post (and a few more) before she went on maternity leave. She gave birth to a healthy girl, Audrey, on December 13.
Cloth or disposable? Clark wrote about this way back in 2005. I guess it’s a question that Sightliners, rightfully, agonize over as they’re gearing up for a diapering blitz of their own. Our baby will probably be changed between 3000 and 7000 times in the first two years. For now, still a few months away from my due date, I still get kind of flustered when people ask me my diapering plan; I don’t have one. But I’m reading up. So far, as I weigh cost, health issues, and environmental footprint, cloth is winning out. But, as several new mothers have warned me, I might change my tune a few weeks into this adventure.At the time Clark posted about diapers a few years ago, a study commissioned by the British Environment Agency (reported on here) had just come out suggesting there’s almost no difference between the two, at least in terms of environmental impacts. It sounded like the grocery bag question (paper vs. plastic) where other choices—like what you put in the bag—made the biggest difference. In the case of diapers, the comparison of environmental impacts depends a lot on how the cloth ones are cleaned and dried.
Still, when I read that an estimated 27.4 billion disposable diapers are used each year in the US, resulting in a possible 3.4 million tons deposited annually in landfills, I can’t bear the thought of adding to that pile. And apparently, disposable diapers take over 200 years to decompose—meaning that every single diaper ever tossed still sits in the landfill where it landed. Yuck.
All the same, ecological concerns might take a backseat when you’re talking about your own precious new baby. We think of cloth diapers as baggy and droopy--less absorbent, less comfortable for baby. But do I really want my baby sealed in plastic 24 hours a day? Then again, disposables are really convenient and work really well—what about my sanity?
