Daily Score Blog

British Columbia often comes off smelling like roses in the Cascadia Scorecard - energy consumption, sprawl, lifespan, etc.

But the province lags far behind the Northwest states in the most basic step toward water conservation in homes and other buildings: charging by the gallon. The last figure I saw for British Columbia had more than 80 percent of residents paying for their water at a fixed rate. Most BC buildings don't even have water meters where they draw water from public mains.

In the Northwest states, unmetered water is a rarity, found almost exclusively in remote rural areas or in places where people draw on their own wells.

Another thing about BC is that it often copies California's environmental steps-clean car rules, air quality rules, etc. Yesterday, California mandated that cities charge their residents for water based on the quantity used, as the Sacramento Bee reports. Perhaps BC will emulate the Golden State again.

The California move is directly good for Cascadia in one other way: some small share of Sacramento's water flows from the Trinity River, in northwestern California and southern Cascadia.

Today, we released the latest results of our pollution indicator, which monitors various toxic pollutants in human bodies by sampling breast milk.

We found flame retardants in the bodies of northwesterners at 20 to 40 times the levels evident in Japan and Europe.

Read the press release here and find links to the full study and troves of supporting information.

If you're interested in the wave of media attention the study is drawing, wait a day or two and check here. (We haven't posted today's coverage yet; we're too busy working with the media to provide good coverage.)

I've been looking for a reason to write about this for some time, but this excellent Eugene Register Guard editorial has forced my hand.

The recent runup in petroleum prices has put a new spotlight on an old controversy--whether the world is running short of oil. The battle lines of the debate are clearly drawn. One side--consisting primarily of old-guard petroleum geologists and a few maverick oil industry insiders--thinks that we are fast approaching a peak in global oil production, after which oil supplies will inevitably and inexorably fall. They point out that global oil discoveries peaked long ago, in the 1960s, and that oil companies now discover only one barrel of oil for every four that are pumped out of the ground. Walter Youngquist, a respected former professor of geology at the University of Oregon, is among those predicting a near-term peak.

M. King Hubbert

The other side of the debate--consisting primarily of energy economists, oil industry analysts and some younger geologists--believes that a peak is so far off in the future that to worry about it now is folly. Oil may run scarce in a generation or so, but there's no compelling reason to panic now. Rapid advances in technology make it possible to tap oil fields far under the ocean, and underground imaging is now so sophisticated that even small oilfields can be targeted and tapped cost-effectively. Plus, they say, there's still lots of exploration left to be done in oil-rich regions of the world, including Iran and Iraq. And even if conventional oil supplies run thin, there's always "unconventional oils" such as tar sands and oil shale that can, for the right price, be tapped.

The recent price runups, these "optimists" believe, are a symptom not of geological limits, but of a surge in demand from the developing world (China and India), coupled with political unrest in oil producing nations (Venezuela, Russia, Iraq, and Nigeria, and even in Saudi Arabia).

This is one California trend that I'm not excited to see extended to the Northwest: Gov. Schwarzenegger just signed into law a bill to open up carpool lanes to hybrid cars.

We've written about this before, but it's probably worth repeating: though undoubtedly well-intentioned, this measure probably wouldn't save any energy.

This piece by John Tierney in the New York Times Magazine is wrong in many ways, so it's probably important to point out what's right about it.

To summarize the article (we read, so you don't have to!): Cars are great, high-tech roads are cool, people who don't like new roads are condescending nanny-statists who oppose consumer choice, public transit is too expensive, and the only real solutions to traffic congestion and transportation financing are 1) to tax gasoline and 2) start charging people to use the highway--and to raise the tolls when the roads are congested.

Stripping out the inaccuracies, and the sneering--particularly about the "elitism" of smart growth advocates--the nut of the article is basically right. Cars are darned useful inventions; gas is underpriced; and congestion pricing really would be an effective way to reduce congestion.

Oil prices surged to a new record today, briefly topping $50 a barrel.

Now, there's nothing inherently significant about crossing the $50 threshold -- it may have a minor psychological significance to people who follow oil markets closely, but that importance is more symbolic than substantive. Still, I'm sure that this "event" will get coverage in tomorrow's newspapers.

There are 2 things that today's petroleum news brings to mind. The first is how vulnerable we've made our local economies to international unrest. It seems that any oil supply disturbance, anywhere in the globe, sends prices up. Today, it was unrest in Nigeria, coupled with the delayed effects of hurrican Ivan. Tomorrow, who knows? But because there's no shortage of calamity in the oil-producing regions of the world, the one thing that's sure to be in good supply is uncertainty. And that uncertainty raises the price of oil -- sucking money out of the Northwest economy. After all, we don't make much oil here in the Pacific Northwest, so we have to export money out of our region in order to import our petroleum.

But the second thing worth noting about the oil price runup is just how bad futures markets can be at predicting future prices. Take a look at this graph of the price of oil futures contracts for December delivery:

For people who aren't as obsessed as I am about energy markets, here's what it means: For years, professional commodity traders were betting that oil would cost under $25 a barrel this December. In 1999 (well before this graph starts) the bet was for $16/barrel today. Even the start of the Iraq war made little impact on oil prices. But now, as December approaches, the predicted price is $49. (That's going to make a bunch of people who bought oil contracts in 1999 very happy, and a bunch of people who sold them pretty upset.)

This is just one of many reminders that futures markets represent a guess -- and that even people whose livelihoods depend on it can't predict the future. Which is why I never make predictions, especially about something as volatile as energy prices. On the other hand -- that's quite an upward trend on that graph, wouldn't you say?

California did its part, adopting new vehicle emission standards for greenhouse gases, as the Post Intelligencer reported.

Now it's Cascadia's turn (as we discussed here).

As the Oregonian and the Post Intelligencer report today, spotted owls--the canaries in the old growth--are still disappearing.

The old, obvious threat of clearcut logging--the first horseman of the owl apocalypse--is no longer the main problem. That's because it has largely stopped in their habitat in the Northwest states, as shown in this figure.

Instead, the other three horsemen are endangering the birds: exotic species (such as the barred owl), unnaturally severe wildfires, and new diseases (such as West Nile Virus).

This dynamic is a perfect encapsulation of Cascadian trends generally: simpler problems are giving way to more subtle, interconnected, and systemic ones. Exotic species, new diseases, and worsened fires are all connected to the long history of human action in the Northwest, to climate change, and to our increasingly globalized economy.

The morals of the story: First, err on the side of conservation, because we haven't begun to understand the complexities of nature. Second, focus on systemic solutions--innovations that solve many problems at once.

No, really.

A new study, mentioned in today's Seattle Times, found that sprawl is really bad for your health. To wit:

The study, which analyzed data on more than 8,600 Americans in 38 metropolitan areas, found that rates of arthritis, asthma, headaches and other complaints increased with the degree of sprawl. Living in the least sprawling areas, compared with living in the most, was like adding about four years to people's lives, the study found. (Emphasis added.)

The researchers said that sedentary lifestyles promoted by auto-dependent communities were at least partially to blame for shortened lifespans.

Winston Churchill was once reported to have said: "We shape our buildings and thereafter they shape us." I guess the same thing is true for our neighborhoods.

In a time of political gridlock, no political leader can implement terribly much of his or her agenda. But in certain positions, such as that of the US president, even a little bit of the agenda amounts to a lot.

The Seattle Times is running a thorough and impressive series on the Bush Administration's environmental record. Today's installment concerns the administration's approach to the US Endangered Species Act.

Two comments:

First, the administration has been able to make dramatic changes in policy without consulting Congress, demonstrating just how much the presidency still matters even when it's mostly checked by opponents in Congress.

Second, the administration has made these changes, which almost all weaken environmental protections, through stealth. Typically, it hides substantive changes in procedural reforms. Viewed from a broad perspective, this tactic is a testament to the depth and breadth of environmental sentiment in the United States.

Windpower is making encouraging gains in the Northwest, thanks most recently to private sector investment from Northwest utilities.

But it's still a bit player. It now provides little more than 1 percent of electricity in the Northwest states. It's growing pretty fast, but not as fast as its competitors. Since 2000, in actual electrical output--that is, adjusting for the fact that the wind doesn't always blow--Cascadia has installed 17 times as much new natural gas-fired generating capacity as new wind mills.

And natural gas extraction comes at a substantial cost to ecosystems just outside Cascadia in Alberta and Wyoming. The Wyoming situation is detailed in yesterday's Seattle Times as part of its valuable new series on the environment under the Bush administration.

The Santa Rosa (California) Press Democrat explores what climate change will mean for the extreme south of Cascadia: possibly the end of the $2 billion wine industry in Sonoma County and vicinity. More journalism should be like this.

The federal minimum wage in the U.S. is $5.15 an hour. But based on the cost of housing and other necessities, the living wage in Montana is calculated at $8.61 per hour for a single adult, $17.07 per hour for a single adult with two children.

For positions that pay a living wage, there are far more applicants than there are jobs: "On average, 12 people apply for jobs that pay $17.07 per hour in Montana. Four apply for every opening that offers $8.61 per hour."

One of the advantages of the "living wage" is that it can be tailored to the actual cost of living in different parts of the country. That makes it a far more flexible standard than the poverty line or the federal minimum wage. Washington and Oregon have set their minimum wages higher than the federal line. But that's only appropriate. According to the living wage calculations, the cost of living is higher in those states than it is in Idaho and Montana.

If you're interested in how the budget for the living wage is calculated, the Job Gap reports for Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, published by the Northwest Federation of Community Organizations, are definitely worth a read.

The non-partisan National Bureau of Economic Research recently decided that the most recent U.S. recession lasted from March through November of 2001.

The Bureau of the Census, on the other hand, reports that median household income in the U.S. has fallen for 4 straight years:

Likewise, the employment-to-population ratio is much lower now than it was 4 years ago. The only good news is that it's stopped falling, and is now just stagnant.

It seems to me that we all need to be a little clearer about what we mean when we talk about recession and recovery. Yes, the "economy" may be expanding. Middle-class wages aren't. For my money, the latter is more important than the former.

(Thanks to Brad DeLong for the graph.)

Vancouver just opened its first new downtown school in half a century. Elsie Roy Elementary, located right on the False Creek Seawall in the Concord Pacific project, opened its doors on September 7 to 250 children, most of whom could walk to the school from their highrise homes. Many were already familiar with the location, since they likely graduated from the Dorothy Lam Child Care Centre right next door and played in the adjacent park.

School Trustee Andrea Reimer visited the school during its first week, and asked the kids where they lived. Many could point to the windows of their homes from the school grounds, albeit ones that were often hundreds of feet off the ground.

When the Concord Pacific development was being planned, the City insisted on sites for two schools. But the School Board, unsure whether the demand would materialize, was reluctant to build them. Big mistake. It was soon being lobbied by dozens of parents who had counted on the school being ready when their kids came of age - one of the main reasons they had moved downtown.

The School Board now realizes it has to start planning for the next school in the Coal Harbour neighbourhood, given the number of children already there.

Two lessons: If you plan for children, you may get more than you expected. And a neighbourhood that's good for kids is good for everyone else.

(Vancouver may also learn a third lesson. We'll be able to compare the kids of Elsie Roy Elementary who can walk, bike and blade to school with those who don't. Ironically, the former live in a highrise neighbourhood, the latter in the suburbs.)