Weekend Reading 1/27/12

The Dumbest Idea Ever, "Sustainable" is unsustainable, and more.
Eric Hess on January 27, 2012 at 9:36 am

Editor’s note: We’re curious what readers think of this series. Is it useful? What do you like most? How can we make it better? Leave a note in comments.

Eric dP:

My top recommendation this week goes to James Wells’ righteous rant at Daily Kos, “Pretty Much the Dumbest Idea Ever.” Wells unleashes a real fire-breather on the Northwest coal export plans:

The plan is to dig up two trillion pounds of rocks and ship them 6,000 miles to China.  There they will light those rocks on fire, so they can make more pieces of cheap plastic crap that we will buy and then owe them even more money, while we choke on their pollution.  What could possibly go wrong?

In the year 2012, if this is the best new project we can think of to improve our livelihood, we are in serious trouble.

Considerably more measured in tone, I also recommend the Economist on the inevitable decline of American coal.

Read more »

6 Comments

The Cleverness of the “Barrel Fee”

Revenue on the cheap: who wins and who loses?
Eric de Place on January 26, 2012 at 10:30 am
EIA_barrel of oil

If you’re out to raise money for transportation projects, one of the more clever methods is the so-called “barrel fee” that is the centerpiece of Governor Gregoire’s new transportation package. It’s structured in such a way that it minimizes impacts on Washington by effectively off-loading the costs to oil companies and out-of-state drivers. In fact, my back-of-the-envelope estimate is that for every dollar residents pay, the state will net roughly $2.20 in revenue.

Now, whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends on your point of view. On the one hand, it’s relatively painless for Washington’s residents. On the other hand, by muting the fee’s price signal, it increases the disconnect between drivers and the true cost of the roads we use. There may also be some equity implications for out-of-state fuel users, but more on all that in a moment.

First, here’s how the barrel fee works: the state levies a fee of $1.50 on each barrel of oil that’s refined in Washington for transportation purposes. As a practical matter, oil companies will pass on much of that cost to the state’s consumers. If the cost is fully passed on it would work out to 3.6 cents per gallon of gasoline, diesel, or other fuel. It’s a price increase to be sure, but a relatively modest one—around $19 per year for a typical driver—that’s well within the average weekly fluctuation in gas prices.

Here’s where it gets interesting: Washington refines about twice as much oil as it actually consumes, and the governor’s barrel fee pointedly applies to petroleum products that are sold for consumption outside the state. That means Washington’s coffers can benefit from fees on twice as much oil as Washington consumers will actually pay for. (It’s similar, in some ways, to the way that some natural resource-producing jurisdictions benefit from extraction fees on products that are ultimately used elsewhere.)

So who picks up the other half of the tab?

Read more »

5 Comments

What Coal Dust Looks Like in Alaska

Photos taken nears a coal terminal in Seward.
Eric de Place on January 25, 2012 at 10:45 am
This post is part of the research project: Northwest Coal Exports

We’ve already seen how coal dust looks near export terminals at Point Roberts and Prince Rupert, British Columbia. Now let’s take a gander at the export facility at Seward, Alaska.

As a 2010 article in the Anchorage Daily News calls it:

When the north wind blows in Seward, dust flies off a large pile of coal and covers the town’s scenic boat harbor in black grit.

Photos make the problem clear. Courtesy of the good folks at Resurrection Bay Conservation Alliance, here are four photos of coal dust in and around the Seward Harbor.

Read more »

5 Comments

Recent Coal Export Trends: Q3 2011

Western shipments declined in third quarter 2011.
Eric de Place on January 24, 2012 at 3:00 pm
This post is part of the research project: Northwest Coal Exports

Here’s a look at the latest coal report from the US EIA, taking us up through the third quarter of 2011. In this chart, you see the past 15 years of quarterly data.

I’m showing Customs Districts here, not ports. The Port of Seattle does not move coal. But some coal does get exported out of the Seattle Customs District region by way of the rail crossing at Blaine, Washington. It is, by all accounts, Powder River Basin coal heading to BC’s Westshore Terminal for onward shipment to Asia.

Somewhat surprisingly, the third quarter of 2011 saw a decline in coal export volumes in both the Seattle and Los Angeles Customs Districts, as well as in the West overall. The Seattle District moved 1.25 million tons of coal in the third quarter, down 13 percent from the second quarter. Los Angeles District exports were down 25 percent. Right now, it looks like the Seattle District will ship just a bit more than 5 million tons in 2011. (Final 2011 numbers are due out in March, and I’ll report them here.)

It may look as though the West has been experiencing a coal export boom in 2011, but the volumes here are really nothing compared to what coal companies are planning. For context, here’s the same data plotted against the plans for the Cherry Point project alone:

Read more »

13 Comments

Don’t Reach for the Skittles, Kid

A new study disputes the link between junky school food and obesity. But that's not the whole story.
Jennifer Langston on January 24, 2012 at 12:30 pm
flickr, kswx_29

flickr, kswx_29

Many Northwest parents have campaigned to ban sugary sodas, candy bars, and similarly worthless foods from school vending machines, based on the reasonable assumption that this would encourage healthier eating habits. But a new study published last week comes to a surprising conclusion: at least in middle schools, the researchers found no link between increased access to junk food at school and higher obesity rates.

The study, published this month in Sociology of Education, tracked nearly 20,000 students and found that while the percentage of kids who had ready access to high-calorie snack foods in school vending machines increased between fifth and eighth grades, the percentage of obese students declined slightly, from 39 percent to 35 percent. (Still, it seems wrong to look for the silver lining in numbers that suggest more than a third of eighth graders are still obese.)

Why? Here’s what lead Pennsylvania State University researcher Jennifer Van Hook had to say:

We expected to find a definitive connection between the sale of junk food in middle schools and weight gain among children between fifth and eighth grades. But, our study suggests that—when it comes to weight issues—we need to be looking far beyond schools and, more specifically, junk food sales in schools, to make a difference.

Schools only represent a small portion of children’s food environment. They can get food at home, they can get food in their neighborhoods, and they can go across the street from the school to buy food. Additionally, kids are actually very busy at school. When they’re not in class, they have to get from one class to another and they have certain fixed times when they can eat. So, there really isn’t a lot of opportunity for children to eat while they’re in school, or at least eat endlessly, compared to when they’re at home. As a result, whether or not junk food is available to them at school may not have much bearing on how much junk food they eat.

Explain that to the Seattle School Board, which is considering relaxing the ban on unhealthy food in high school vending machines that’s been in place since 2004. After area high schools replaced junk food with milk, natural fruit juice, granola bars and baked chips, student association profits from vending sales dropped from $214,000 to $17,000. (That money goes to defray the costs of sports uniforms, support clubs, pay for dances, and publish yearbooks, and students have rightfully complained that the school board hasn’t followed through on its promises to replace that lost revenue.)

Based on those numbers, it seems clear that less junk food is being eaten in school hallways. That jibes with previous studies that have found that the more vending machines found in a school, the higher the number of student snack food purchases.

But clearly, kids don’t just eat at school. One of the arguments for relaxing the junk food vending ban is that kids on open campuses can generally walk down the street to a gas station or minimart and help themselves to all the Doritos, Skittles and Red Bull that they want. In the state of Oregon, which instituted a similar ban on the sale of high-calorie vending snacks in 2007, teachers have also complained that removing junk food from their lounges apparently violates their civil rights to eat cookies.

Some will use this latest study to argue that putting junk food back in school vending machines is a fine idea. Others will claim that it offers a misguided excuse to set a terrible example of what food kids should be putting into their bodies. But that’s not what the study’s authors are really saying: the more poignant part of their message is that if we want to make a dent in what kids eat, we need to reach them long before they can even read The Cat in the Hat, much less a nutrition label. As the study authors argue:

There has been a lot of research showing that many children develop eating habits and tastes for certain types of foods when they are of preschool age, and that those habits and tastes may stay with them for their whole lives. So, their middle school environments might not matter a lot.

Sure, it’s kind of a depressing conclusion. But lots of people with kids will recognize there’s truth to it. It doesn’t mean that we should let 12-year-olds buy all the Ho Hos they want at school. It just means that addressing childhood obesity will be a lot more complicated than banning them and calling it a day.

3 Comments

More Cartoon Economics

A new book from Sightline fellow and funny guy.
Eric de Place on January 24, 2012 at 9:00 am
cartoon intro 2 cover

This is very cool. Sightline fellow Yoram Bauman — the world famous Stand-Up Economist — has a new book out.

It’s the second volume of his popular (and hilarious, truly) Cartoon Introduction to Economics, illustrated once again by Grady Klein. Click below to take a peek:

 

This volume takes up macroeconomics. (The first one covered micro, obviously.)

Yes, it’s geeky. But, also, it really is funny in the way that only monetary policy can be funny.

If you wish you had a better grasp of economics — and who doesn’t — I encourage you to go check it out pronto. Ordering info on Yoram’s website and at Amazon.

Be the first to comment.

Two Wheels and High Heels

Ten lessons from the great cycling cities.
Christine Grant on January 23, 2012 at 10:08 am
Kyoto

Kyoto

In the Seattle suburb where I grew up, the main transportation choice most residents face is what kind of car to buy. I moved to Seattle after college and, inspired by the “car-lite” lifestyles of several friends, decided to give cycling a try.

I fell in love with it. Urban cycling freed me from slow buses, parking meters, and mind-numbing elliptical machines. I arrived at work with more energy. I lost weight. I discovered charming neighborhood restaurants. I could smell fresh laundry and dinners in the oven while I pedaled home through residential streets. Getting from A to B on my bike became the best part of my day.

Recently, I won a fellowship and got to spend six months living life on two wheels in the world’s most bike-friendly cities. I brought home ten lessons, and thousands of photographs, for Cascadia:

1.) It’s the infrastructure, stupid! Amazing infrastructure makes cycling normal and safe in bike meccas, but not yet in the Northwest. For example, parked cars to the left of the bike lane not only provide a barrier between motorized traffic and cyclists, they also minimize a cyclist’s chance of getting “doored.” Most cars in Denmark (pictured) only have one occupant, the driver, and drivers get out on the left. Same goes for the Northwest.

Denmark

Read more »

49 Comments

The Northwest’s Chinese Residents

Which Northwest cities have the most people of Chinese heritage?
Eric de Place on January 20, 2012 at 12:05 pm

In honor of Chinese New Year, I thought it would be fun to crunch some Census numbers to get a sense of where people of Chinese heritage live in the Northwest. In the tables  below, I’ve rank-ordered places in the Northwest according to their share of people who self-identify as Chinese.

As you’ll see, a couple of interesting stories emerge. British Columbia, and especially the Vancouver metro area, have a far greater share of people of Chinese descent than any other place in the Northwest. And in the states, the historical Chinese population centers in Portland and Seattle have given way to newer Chinese settlements in the suburbs.

Now, let’s dig in. First up, here’s a look at Washington:

(CDP means “Census Designated Place,” which often refers to unincorporated places.)

In national terms, a remarkably large share of Washington’s population is Chinese. Only five other states claim a larger percentage (Hawaii, California, New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, but just barely.) Interestingly, despite the city of Seattle’s rich historical legacy, Chinese populations are far more prevalent in Seattle’s eastside suburbs around Bellevue. In fact, the real story of Chinese settlement today seems to center on Bellevue, which boasts nearly half as many people of Chinese descent as Seattle, a place roughly five times bigger.

Scanning the list, you probably won’t recognize all those place names unless your’e a geography whiz. So here’s a quick run-down for some of the less familiar ones: Carlsborg is just west of Sequim on the Olympic Peninsula; Larch Way is sort of east of Lynnwood; Klahanie is basically on the Sammamish Plateau; Fairwood and Maple Heights-Lake Desire are both southeast of Renton; and Clear Lake is east of Burlington in Skagit County.

Figures of Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia are below the jump.

Read more »

7 Comments

Weekend Reading 1/20/2012

Train dreams, neural networks, and more.
Eric Hess on January 20, 2012 at 9:22 am

Alan:

My contrarian nature had me—during Cascadia’s week of snow and ice—belatedly devouring Timothy Egan’s treatise on drought and fire. The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), like Egan’s others, is a masterfully told and deeply researched chronicle of people and nature. In this case, it’s about the state-sized firestorm of 1910 that engulfed Cascadia’s eastern forest province. The Bitteroots of northern Idaho and western Montana erupted in flame, consuming in hours many millions of board-feet of sun-dried timber, along with whole towns and scores of their residents. The subject matter is captivating, like many disaster stories, but what makes it worthy of Egan’s attention is not the disaster itself but the role the fire played in US history. Former President Teddy Roosevelt and his close friend and former Forest Service Chief Gifford Pinchot used the fire to rally the United States to the idea of conservation and, specifically, to the then-radical notion that the federal government in Washington, DC, was the guardian of the nation’s natural heritage. The political meaning of the fire—the way it cemented in US thought the progressive ideals of public stewardship and of natural resources as a universal birthright—justifies Egan’s subtitle about saving America. For me, it was also a story of exceptional relevance in today’s climate debates. Natural disasters and the political meanings we assign to them could save us, or destroy us, again.

Eric dP:

This week I came across the single best chart depicting income inequality that I’ve ever seen. It’s a chart that its creator economist Alan Krueger calls “The Great Gatsby Curve”—take a look at it here on Paul Krugman’s blog. Plotting income inequality against ”generational earnings elasticity” (basically, the ability for younger generations to earn more or less than their parents), the chart shows that not only is the United States among the most unequal of wealthy nations, but it also provides among the worst opportunities for advancement. Even more astonishing, the US has gotten considerably worse on both measure since the 1980s, even relative to other countries. It baffles me that anyone can look at this chart and continue to argue that the American economy works for ordinary people.

Read more »

2 Comments

A New Low For Car Crashes

Vehicle fatalities fell more than 20 percent over the last 5 years.
Clark Williams-Derry on January 20, 2012 at 6:57 am

You may have seen last week some good news from the Centers for Disease Control: for the first time since 1965, homicide fell off the list of the top 15 causes of death in the US. In fact, as I read the latest numbers from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, the homicide death rate for the first half of 2011 may have fallen to its lowest level since 1958! Booyah!

But the data release also included another piece of excellent news: motor vehicle deaths also fell to their lowest level in decades. As the chart to the right shows, last year’s decline continues a remarkable trend: over just the last 5 years, car crash deaths fell by more than 20 percent. And if you believe this data series from saferoads.org (and the recent data all looks correct to me) traffic fatalities in 2010 were at their lowest level since the 1950s. Double booyah!

But the decline in fatalities is only part of the good news. According to the National Safety Council, for every crash death there are roughly 53 nonfatal injuries and 234 crashes that just cause property damage. So the decline in crash fatalities also means a decline in injuries, trauma, and cash wasted on car repairs.

The crash in car crashes also has huge economic benefits. The NSC estimates that every crash fatality corresponds to $6.8 million in economic losses (a figure that incorporates both fatal and nonfatal crashes, and includes both property costs and losses of economic productivity). So the recent decline in fatalities—which has trimmed the number of crash deaths by more than 10,000 per year—is equivalent to an annual economic boost of roughly $70 billion. And if you consider how much people are willing to pay to prevent being killed or injured in a car crash, the economic benefits of fewer fatal crashes grow even larger.

So amid all of the good news, one question remains: why?  Why have car crash rates declined so suddenly and dramatically?  I, for one, think it’s a hidden upside to rising gas prices. As gas prices rose, we drove a bit less—and even modest reductions in driving can have outsized benefits for road safety. Meanwhile, as gas prices soared people were less likely to drive (and buy) the largest SUVs and pickups—vehicles that often conferred little or no real-world safety benefits for their drivers, but made the roads much more dangerous for everyone else.  There’s more to the story than fuel costs; the stalled-out economy of 2008-2010 also put a crimp in people’s appetite for driving, for example. But it’s hard not to see the decline in car crashes as, at least in part, a silver lining in the rise of prices at the pump.

2 Comments