Daily Score Blog

The city council of Vancouver, BC, unanimously passed a resolution on Wednesday, asking the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia -- the Crown corporation that provides most car insurance in the province -- to introduce pay-as-you-drive (PAYD) insurance. PAYD insurance is a powerful way to improve transportation, save lives and money, and reduce energy use and air pollution. The Province reports.

Some of the reader responses to this article are negative. PAYD guru Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute writes, "Many [readers] have the impression that most motorists would end up paying more . . . rather than less, and that rural residents would pay significantly more (only those who drive more than average among rural residents would pay more, half of rural residents would save)." Besides, PAYD would be optional.

P.S. Blowing-my-own-horn alert. The inspiration for this resolution? "A number of councillors heard of the idea at a TransLink workshop." Who gave that presentation? Me.

The ivory-billed woodpecker, a truly remarkable bird that was believed to have gone extinct 60 years ago, has been sighted again in the the Big Woods region of Arkansas. According to John W. Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, it became known as the Lord God bird because people seeing it would exclaim "Lord God, look at that bird."

It's heartening to get a second chance at conserving a species, even though in most cases we only get one. According to a 2002 report by the Natural Heritage Program, many species in the Northwest are teetering on the brink. Here's a rundown of the most endangered species in the region:

UPDATE: A truly first rate article in the New York Times. Here's the crux:

It wasn't a miracle. It wasn't luck. And it wasn't simply the resilience of nature, although that helped. The reason for the astonishing re-emergence of a mysterious bird is as mundane as can be. It is habitat preservation, achieved by hard, tedious work, like lobbying, legislating and fund-raising.

Approaching the summer "driving season" when gas prices often spike, President Bush has pumped up a new set of energy proposals. Even the mainstream media regard them as window dressing. (Witness the Washington Post.) But I'll take the proposals as serious and comment.

1. The Bush administration proposes to allow oil refineries on abandoned military bases, claiming that limited refinery capacity is driving up gas prices and that it's hard to get permission to build new refineries. Military bases, as federal property, are exempt from most local regulations.

In court now, the latest round in the fight between the federal government and the pro-salmon coalition of tribes, conservationists, and sport fisherman. The salmon advocates want to hold the feds responsible for the harm done to salmon by the Columbia and Snake River dams.

The most (unintentionally) hilarious quote from today's coverage comes from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

...the Justice Department argued that the federal agencies that control the 14 dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers cannot be held responsible for the existence of the dams...

Uh... didn't the federal government build the dams in the first place?

Of course, the real issues are much more complex than I'm giving credit for here. Much hinges on the extent to which the government is responsible for dam-induced salmon mortality and what it must do to protect the fish. Perhaps the biggest issue this summer will be whether the dam operators spill more water for fish passage, which will likely raise the cost of electricity in a drought year when rates may already be high. 

British Columbia boasted the fastest provincial economic growth in Canada last year. A 3.9 percent increase in GDP easily outstripped the national average of 2.8 percent. The headlines in today's Vancouver Sun trumpet the forest industry as a principal cause. But therein lies a certain danger.

Just two days ago, the Vancouver Sun prominently warned that BC's forest industry would soon contract. A weakening US housing market, coupled with decreased buying power from the US dollar, will reduce the import market and drive down lumber prices by 10 percent in each of the next two years, according to economic forecasters. 

BC's recent economic growth is certainly encouraging, but over-reliance on the forest industry is potentially cause for concern. Forestry has a troublesome history of being unpredictable--and that volatility can result in economic whiplash. All too often, aggressive cutting suddenly gives way to layoffs and idled mills when forest products hit the doldrums. It's wise to prevent that boom-bust effect from rippling throughout the entire province.

William Saletan, always a perceptive analyst of US politics around abortion and reproductive health, has a perceptive Slate column on the alleged surge in pharmacists refusing, on conscience, to prescribe Plan B.

Like Saletan, I've been reading the news stories on this alleged controversy and finding them overblown. There's not much of a trend, and that's good news, whether you're concerned about lowering the abortion rate or protecting women's rights or, like me, doing both.

The golden boy of Northwest news reporters, Timothy Egan, ventures to southern California to compose an excellent overview of the US trend toward high-occupant/toll (HOT) lanes in today's New York Times. (Money quote: The Gubernator says, "Californians can't get from place to place on little fairy wings.") All across the United States, variable tolls-congestion pricing-are becoming the new conventional wisdom about how to do road expansions. In a few places, existing HOV lanes are up for conversion to HOT lanes.

The article shows the progress that road pricing has made in public acceptance, in part because it passes muster with both libertarians and sustainers. (Something I've noted here and here.)

In all the heated debate about Washington's new gas tax increase of 9.5 cents per gallon, one thing has been generally overlooked: the effect of another sales tax on lower-income residents. Today, however, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran an interesting article on the subject. But I'm still left wondering whether the tax increase is a good idea.

According to the Economic Opportunity Institute, Washington has the most regressive tax structure of any state in the nation. Because the Evergreen State assesses no income tax, but relatively hefty sales taxes, the burden of taxation falls more heavily on poor people here than anywhere else in the U.S. According to this study (pdf) from Citizens for Tax Justice, which is a tad dated now, the lowest-earning fifth of Washington residents pay more than 17 percent of their income in taxes, while the wealthiest 1 percent, pay less than 4 percent. So slapping on another 9.5 cents to the price of gasoline is conceivably a tough blow for lower wage folks.

But when I read the examples of people hurt by high gas prices I mostly didn't have the reaction I expected to. Instead, I was struck by how our reliance on cheap fossil fuels has lured us into wasteful ways.

I've been putting off commenting on Washington State's recently-passed $8 billion transportation package -- funded by a 9.5 cent per gallon increase and new weight-based vehicle fees -- until I could figure out exactly how I feel about it. I still can't. It's complicated.

In general, I like taxes on gasoline.  Gasoline carries many costs -- security, air and water pollution, climate-warming emissions, and the like -- that aren't captured by the market price.  Which means that, no matter how high the market price for gasoline goes, it's still not high enough to account for all the externalities. So in theory I should be in favor of a gas tax increase.

In practice, though, it matters a lot how the money raised through a gas tax is used.  In Washington state, gas taxes are dedicated to roads and car ferries.  As a consequence, gas taxes in the state have tended to accelerate sprawling development at the ever-receding urban fringe -- in precisely the places where residents have to drive most.  So even though gas taxes increase the cost of gasoline, they've also, in effect, increased its consumption.

This time, however, some anti-sprawl advocates in Washington seem genuinely pleased with the transportation package, touting it as a "win."  They give three reasons:  the package focuses on fixing existing highways, rather than building new ones; it provides nearly half a billion in funding for non-car-centered projects such as bike and pedestrian investments, special-needs transit, and a safe routes to school program; and, while it does provide nearly a billion dollars to I-405, the money is flagged for managed (i.e., tolled) lanes that encourage carpooling and transit.

I'm a little less sanguine, though.  And not just because increasing highway capacity on I-405 may foster sprawl, but more because the package provides $2 billion for my pet peeve: rebuilding the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

According to new data, Boise is probably now the third largest city in the U.S. Northwest. With an estimated 208,000 residents, it is larger than either Spokane or Tacoma, its two principal rivals. On average, Boise has added more than 5,900 people each year over the last decade.

Seattle and Portland, of course, are still much bigger--each is easily more than twice the size of Boise. For comparison, Seattle has been adding about 4,100 new people a year, while Portland has been adding nearly 7,800. 

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski intends to have clean-car standards in place in Oregon by the end of the year, according to the Oregonian. His plan is to bypass the legislature and implement the rules administratively.

If he succeeds, it will also trigger Washington's clean-car law.

This is a little off-topic, but any worker who fields a daily flood of emails can relate. A new study, commissioned by TNS Research on behalf of Hewlett Packard, has found that that obsessively checking and responding to email makes us not only distracted, but dumb.

In 80 clinical trials, psychiatrist Dr Glenn Wilson, from King's College London University, monitored the IQ of workers throughout the day.

He found that the IQ of those who tried to juggle messages and work fell by ten points - the equivalent to missing a whole night's sleep - considerably more than the four point fall detected after smoking marijuana.

I'm a little suspicious of the methodology (as are others), and the paranoid part of me wonders if the study could be used to justify limiting workers' access to email, but it does (excuse me while I check this email) ring (and this one) true (just one more).

Oregon will study the possibility of getting its state forests certified as sustainably managed. But for reasons that are not entirely clear, the state is only considering a rather unusual form of labeling.

Oregon will contract with the Pinchot Institute for Conservation to determine its prospects for certification under the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). PEFC, originally from Europe, is not a very common form of labeling in North America. Something seems fishy.

In 1970, year of the first Earth Day, lead was still a gasoline additive. Pollution from industrial and municipal facilities was largely unregulated. Commentators likened breathing in Portland to smoking a pack a day. Most environmental laws hadn't even been conceived.

How is the Northwest doing now? Obviously, we've cleaned up some--but we also face newer, more global challenges, such as the rising accumulation of greenhouse gases and newly troubling chemicals such as PBDEs. Here are few thoughts on the region's success stories and places where we need to get cracking.

We all know them: English ivy, European starlings, Himalayan blackberry, Scotch broom. No, they're not foreign exchange students or international meals. They're part of the legion of exotic invasive species that threaten the ecological integrity of the Northwest. Of course, the Northwest is hardly alone. The American south is overrun with kudzu, for instance.

The poster children of over-abundance are deer, as anyone in the Upper Midwest or the Northeast can tell you. Deer, of course, are native species, but because their predators have largely been eliminated, and because they thrive in semi-developed fragmented landscapes, they are legion. But deer are not alone: Canada geese, grackles, raccoons, opossums, and other species can wreak havoc on ecosystems that are already out of balance.

A good article today, picked up by the Seattle Times, examines the consequences of our alteration of ecosystems. Not only do some foreign invaders out-compete native species, but the populations of a few native species metastasize at the expense of more sensitive species. Here is the crux of the article:

...what's happening isn't natural. It's all man's fault. As the land is changed, often to accommodate development, ecosystems turn much more vanilla, scientists say.

The world does better when it has a buffet of diverse species - some of those plants and animals can benefit people with food and medicine - instead of one flavor fits all, said Oregon State University zoology professor Jane Lubchenco, president of the International Council for Science.