Daily Score Blog

The conventional wisdom is that food access issues are greatest in urban wastelands where there are high concentrations of low-income families. This, the argument goes, is because grocery stores and supermarkets abandoned the “inner cities” along with the mass exodus of many white middle-class residents. In their place grew up smaller convenience stores focused on selling beer and cigarettes.  And there is lots of good data that make this case. (A National Housing Institute paper on the topic lays this out quite well and we have written about it here at the Daily Score as well.) But could farm country be a food wasteland too?

A recently released study from the Washington State Budget and Policy Center concludes that rural communities face the biggest barriers to healthy food:

Many rural residents in Washington must travel long distances to grocery stores and therefore have less access to affordable fruits and vegetables. By contrast, people who live in more metropolitan areas or in higher income communities are more likely to have access to stores that offer a greater variety of fruits and vegetables.

Federal stimulus funding has allocated more dollars to support the goals of low income weatherization programs and create green jobs. Agencies in the Northwest now have to figure out the most effective way to mobilize those resources to meet those goals.

To learn more about how the dollars are affecting the work of community action agencies in the region I spoke with Chuck Eberdt of the Opportunity Council in Bellingham and Rand Berke of the Community Action Program of Oregon, a community action agency in Salem. Neither Eberdt or Berke come across as pessimists about their programs or the stimulus money. Instead they both talk about these challenges like the professionals that they are; looking under the hood thinking about ways to make it run better.

Both Eberdt and Berke are looking for ways to fix the bottleneck created with the doubling of funds in their budgets and a short time to spend the money. As an article in today’s New York Times agencies are scrambling to ensure funds intended to support more production and more savings for low income families get where they are needed most.

Last week I heaped praise on Portland’s plans to revise their city building codes to encourage family-friendly courtyard housing.

This week, I am feeling the same way about another set of changes being considered that would make it easier to generate clean energy and reduce runoff in urban neighborhoods. A package of changes called the “Green Bundle” is being reviewed this summer by the City of Portland. The Planning Commission will have a hearing on the proposed changes on August 25. 

Among many other nifty urban clean energy ideas like solar panels and green roofs, the Bundle would “allow small-scale wind energy systems to exceed Zoning Code height limits, either as stand-alone towers or when incorporated into building architecture.”

Density is good for many  different  reasons.

But people don’t make choices about where they live based on people per square acre any more than they base them on area median income. The choice of where to live, although influenced by test scores, cost of housing, proximity to work and amenities, is often influenced by qualitative not quantitative data. 

Through the years I have seen my friends and co-workers following a typical pattern: graduate college, get a job, get married, look for a house, and then start having children.

 This post originally appeared June 11, 2009. It was based on the version of the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act (H.R. 2454, or "Waxman-Markey") approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. By June 26, when the bill passed the House and headed to the Senate, it had grown by almost 480 pages. What changed?

Waxman-Markey is 1,428 pages long, so I'd be fibbing to say that I've actually read all of it. But I've pored over key sections and, though I expected to hate the amendments, I don't. Most of the changes are benign or immaterial. Few are nefarious. None are deal breakers. What's more, the tone of much news coverage -- decrying the log-rolling and back-room deal making that brought the bill to passage -- was wrong-headed, I thought. The "special deals" were mostly things like increased funding for job training programs--not exactly a sign of public corruption or parochialism.

My grade?

Overall, I still give Representatives Henry Waxman of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts a solid “B.”  I’m grading on a curve--the curve of political reality. Straight A’s are hard to come by with oil, coal, and other industries spending almost $80 million lobbying on climate policy in just the past three months (pdf). Under withering fire, Waxman-Markey’s cap-and-trade superstructure remained intact. In fact, the 280-page centerpiece of ACES that covers cap and trade--the part of the bill on which I've focused my attetion--has changed little in months. The bill grew by accretion, like a raft to which ever more planks are lashed.

So I'm rejoicing about the bill's passage, but holding my breath about the US Senate. In particular, I'm hoping that the offset provisions of ACES--already weak in the bill's version I wrote about before and weakened further in the final act--get stronger in the Senate. Even if they don't, we can hope that the administration implements the offset provisions in ways that preserve the law's overall effectiveness. If so, ACES could be the most important piece of energy or environmental legislation in a generation. It’s also much-needed economic policy: clean energy can be the path out of recession.

How do I love ACES? I’ll count the ways as soon as I document its flaws. First, though, a warning: to keep this post short I used some wonk-speak. (An English-language exposition is available in our revised Cap and Trade 101 federal primer.)

6 (+1) things I hate about Waxman-Markey:

The most common sense of the word “density” in land-use terms is simple: more people in a smaller area. Frequently the only way to accomplish this is to build taller, multi-unit buildings. High rises.

But in areas with low concentrations of people, increasing density can mean something different than building up to the sky. There are ways to create more diversity and choice in single-family neighborhoods—accessory dwelling units (ADUs) can mean mother-in-law apartments, garages converted into detached housing, or rooms for rent. All of these are good growth strategies for cities, providing families and property owners with more options, and maintaining the character of some single family neighborhoods. 

There is a lot going on in the region when it comes to increasing choices in single-family neighborhoods. Vancouver, Portland and Seattle are all looking at ways to accommodate more people, while keeping established neighborhoods intact. Each city has a different name and a different game plan to legalize ADU options that have been shut out by city codes, but in all, density is on the rise—and not the high rise.

There's a move afoot to spread urban farming and its healthful benefits to folks without their own plots for planting.  

Will Allen is gaining national attention for Growing Power, a Milwaukee program that's growing food in the city for 10,000 urbanites (including schools and low-cost market baskets delivered to neighborhood drop off points); trains want-to-be growers in the ways of intensive farming on small plots; turns organic waste into rich soil; and employs local residents, including some from public-housing projects. 

His inspiring efforts were profiled in a great piece in Sunday's New York Times Magazine. For Allen, it's about more than helping the environment by supporting organic, local foods. For him, it's also a matter of equality. Low-income city 'hoods tend to have limited access to good grocery stores and are dominated by fast-food restaurants and convenience stores, creating what Allen calls a "food desert."

As Allen told the NYT:

“It’s a form of redlining. We’ve got to change the system so everyone has safe, equitable access to healthy food.”

In Seattle, a gardening twist on Match.com is expanding the reach of the urban-farming movement.

A new, nonprofit investigative news site officially launched this week. InvestigateWest aims to:

"provide high-quality investigative journalism about environmental, health and social justice issues across the West. InvestigateWest is a nonprofit investigative journalism studio that will distribute its work online, in print and on radio and TV stations." 

This is great news for the region given the shrinking number of news publications and the always-diminishing numbers of staff at the outlets that remain.

President Obama recently signed into law what’s called “cash for clunkers” legislation intended to take gas guzzlers off the road by offering an incentive for owners to upgrade to newer, more efficient cars. This is a really great idea because the program incentivizes the right thing: fuel efficiency. But the legislation has been criticized as more of a support for the ailing auto industry than an energy efficiency program.

In any case, when compared to the Scrap It program in British Columbia, part of the Canadian government’s Retire Your Ride program, the US effort—the Car Allowance Rebate System [CARS]—pales.  

(click for full size)

Here are some interesting facts about this structure:

Lots of money is flowing from all levels of government to support energy efficiencies. But how much of that money is going to create green jobs that pay well and benefit families that need retrofits and weatherization the most – and who can least afford both the upgrades and the burden of inefficiency?

The good news is that at the local and national level labor unions and vocational programs are starting to train workers to get the skills they need to get green jobs.

We’ve looked at how dense urban areas compare with sprawling areas in terms of per capita emissions and we’ve also looked at whether Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) and gas consumption is higher in areas that sprawl than in compact areas. In both cases studies have shown what we might suspect: areas that sprawl have more climate changing emissions, bigger and less efficient vehicles.

Now how about energy use? Do compact residential communities use less energy than areas that sprawl? A study recently published in Housing Debate takes a comprehensive look at residential energy use in compact areas compared with those that sprawl.  The conclusions, again, are what we might have suspected all along. Land use policy is tantamount to energy policy. The study is worth a closer look to dig into some of the reasons this is true.

Who ought to be better at raising endangered Oregon spotted frogs in captivity? Zookeepers or felons?

Since the project started, only eight of their frogs have died — a figure significantly lower than at Woodland Park Zoo, the Oregon Zoo and Northwest Trek, which are also part of the project to rear the Oregon spotted frog in captivity.

Marc P. Hayes, the Department of Fish and Wildlife senior research scientist leading the effort, said that he had doubted the success of the project behind bars. But his concerns vanished after he saw how much time Greer and Delp could devote to the project.

"They have the time to address care on a level that is not possible with those other institutions," Hayes said. "They baby those things literally night and day.

It turns out that people with little else to do all day than lavish attention on their tadpoles -- changing water every two hours and slipping their charges an extra cricket or two -- raise very happy frogs. And it beats handing out basketballs at the prison gym.

As one might expect from a prison near the Evergreen State College, the Cedar Creek Corrections Center also keeps inmates busy with organic gardening and beekeeping. And as a recent KUOW story points out, other institutions in WA's Sustainable Prisons Project are teaching meth manufacturers to grow native plants and drug dealers to raise composting worms.

It's that much more proof that no stone should go unturned to find easy, low-cost sustainability measures -- and that the benefits far outstretch our conventional understanding of "going green." It means jobs, rehabilitation, stronger communities, economic development. And, if they're as successful as the frog project, maybe we should all worry about keeping our day jobs.

A quick refresher on carbon tax shifts: The plan literally shifts taxes, it doesn't add taxes. All revenue generated by the carbon tax in BC are returned to individuals and businesses through reductions in other taxes. But that's not always abundantly evident to consumers when they're standing at the filling station and opening their wallets. That's probably why public support has been moderate at the very least.

on carbon tax shifting:

• Almost half of B.C. residents support the tax (last July, 40 percent expressed support and 56 percent opposed it). Current support for the tax is close to, but not quite fully back to the level achieved in February 2008 soon after the measure was first announced by the BC government (but not yet implemented).
  
  
• When asked how they would feel about the introduction of a B.C.-style carbon tax in their own province, opinions remain divided in every province.
  
  
• Nonetheless, support has increased since last July in every province, most noticeably in Alberta (up 17 points) and Saskatchewan (up 13 points).
  
  
• Across the country, support approaches 50 per cent from the Atlantic provinces to Manitoba, and remains somewhat lower in Saskatchewan (41 percent) and Alberta (44 percent).

The survey was conducted by Environics, by telephone from May 21 to 26 with a representative sample of 2,003 Canadians, including 250 in British Columbia.

For our latest research report, we looked at gasoline consumption data in the Northwest for 2008 and found some significant drops. In fact, total gasoline consumption saw the biggest drop since 1980. It would be easy to attribute this to high gas prices and the economic downturn we experienced last year, but the fact is that this drop actually marks an acceleration of a trend that's been going on in the Northwest for nearly a decade.

That's right. Per capita gasoline consumption has dropped in 8 of the last 9 years. Northwesterners are leading the way as the nation takes steps to get off the volatile fossil fuel roller coaster. So, while price and economic factors play a role, we can also track a decade of smart trends that reduce consumption: several decades of smart growth policies, increased transit use, and improved fuel efficiency are just a few.

And even now that gas prices are a bit lower, early 2009 data indicates that our healthier new habits are sticking. In early 2009, Vehicle Miles Traveled have dropped as well adding some depth to our picture of how folks in the Northwest are taking steps to get off the volatile fossil fuel roller coaster.

What does it mean for local decision-makers? For one, investments in freeway capacity no longer make as much sense as investments in transit, walkable communities, and efficiency.

The full report is available here. Here are some of the key findings: